**8.4 SQU students' awareness of the 1000-point electronic system**

The report of the committee referred to above showed that the team used different methods to raise awareness among SQU students in general and particularly among the targeted students at CE and CN. The used methods were:


In spite of the committee members' efforts to raise students' awareness, responses from students in terms of attending workshops or uploading events on the system to accumulate points were low. The survey showed that only 39 participants (69.6%) were aware of the electronic system of the 1000 points.

*The Extracurricular 1000-Point Project: A Descriptive Study of a Creative Activities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109718*

#### **8.5 SQU students' attitudes toward the 1000-point electronic system**

Out of the 56 responses we received from both student groups, 50 (89.3%) said they were satisfied with the electronic system of the 1000 points, while 49 (87.5%) clarified that the 1000 points motivated them to participate in students' activities Moreover, 45 (80.4%) viewed the electronic system of the 1000 points as the repository that helped them to document their activities.

### **9. Conclusions**

As we can see from the above results, 1000 points were designed to encourage SQU students to participate in extracurricular activities by documenting their activities and organizing them under four main categories. Furthermore, SQU connected the structure of the project with an electronic system that allows students to plan their activities under the four major categories and choose the points they would like to earn. The 1000-point electronic system enables each student to monitor his/her progress over the years while they are at SQU in the main categories mentioned earlier. During the course of a student's stay at SQU, all points earned from activities other than coursework and degree programs will count toward their overall grade point average. Each of the four main categories is divided into several subcategories that represent the ways in which a student can earn points toward meeting the requirements of the SQU graduate attributes. If a student undertakes multiple activities that fall under more than one category/subcategory, he or she must choose only one category/subcategory for that activity in order to collect points. Points can only be earned from one category or subcategory. When the graduate students obtain two certificates, one for academic achievement and one for extracurricular activities. The current study has found that SQU is the first to use this system in the Middle East. It is used nowhere else in the region.

As is the case with other extracurricular activities, this 1000-point program is a voluntary noncredit points system for students to accumulate as many points out of 1000 as they wish during their time at SQU. This is in agreement with Ref. [19], who defines extracurricular activities as those activities that take place outside the regular school curriculum and are usually voluntary and non-creditable. A pilot program has been set up at SQU, so that the system can be tested and modified before it is implemented across all colleges at the university. SQU was able to overcome all the challenges, especially the technical ones.

In order to increase students' awareness of the system and its use, the system will be made mandatory. Despite the small number of students who participated in the survey, results show there is acceptance from them of the electronic system. This program was developed by SQU after noticing students' reluctance to participate in extracurricular activities and to meet the market's growing demands for graduates who are multiskilled, especially in soft skills and management abilities.
