Early Life

Hafiz was born in Hulu Selangor, Selangor. He was born into a family of Educators. His father was a Headmaster, and his mother was an English and Life-Skills teacher. He is the fourth from six siblings. He was brought up with the values of educators and had experienced school life even before he entered one. His mother often brought him along to camps and motivational workshops. The early exposure to the life of an educator contributed to how he sees education today. He received his early education around his hometown Serendah and Sungai Choh, until Form 3. His leadership capability was recognised early on when he was appointed as the class leader in Year 3.  He was made prefect when he was in Form 2 and 3. 

Apart from being a huge influencer in Hafiz's life in term of his view in educational practices  in general, Hafiz's father also made sure that Hafiz fulfilled Hafiz's artistic skills too. This involves a wide range of arts activities including drawing, painting, and colouring, to playing musical instrument especially the synthesiser. 

After attaining 7A and 1B in PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah), he entered MARA Junior Science College Terendak (MRSM Terendak) for two years. He was appointed the head of a residential block (Ketua Blok) as well as a prefect (LDP - Ahli Lembaga Disiplin Pelajar) when he was in Form 5. Hafiz also attained the coveted King Scout award (Pengakap Raja) here. The two years spent in MRSM Terendak has taught him numerous life lessons, and that has prepared him to venture into the unknown world beyond the four walls of secondary boarding school. Realising that one of his academic strengths is in English language, he took up a Bachelor Degree in TESL after finishing his secondary schooling years.

Higher Education

Ph.D (Education), The University of Warwick, United Kingdom

A three-and-a-half year long journey into the understanding of why and how people help each others online.

Burning with the passion to further understand the dynamics of online participation, Hafiz pursued his doctoral degree at The University of Warwick, United Kingdom, under the supervision of Dr Michael Hammond. The initial intention for the research was to understand how people actually learn from each other in a mediated environment, particularly on unstructured online communities. The query was partly driven by the fact that educators are still facing the same problem when conducting online learning, especially on distant education programme - high attrition rate.

The research then evolved into looking at the nature of participation in an open online game developers community. In order to understand the nuances of interaction within the community, Hafiz signed up as a mobile game developer at the beginning of his study, and spent three months developing a mobile application called "Alif Ba Ta HD", a mobile app that teaches Arabic letters and pronunciation. the app was published on both Google Play Store, and iOS AppStore, but has since been removed due to lack of maintenance and compatibility issues with the more recent versions of the mobile operating systems. Through this exercise, Hafiz had the opportunity to understand the difficulties of designing and developing a mobile app, and the interactions that happened within the community, especially when asking for help.

In his doctoral thesis, he found the concept of "Helpers" and described them in detailed. Here is the link to his doctoral thesis, found under Warwick online publication service, WRAP: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/81938/. Below is the abstract of the thesis.

Helping as participation in an open online community : an exploratory study

Abstract

The study explores the issues of participation, and to an extent, learning in an open online community of independent game developers, GameSalad.com. GameSalad is a firm-hosted online support forum for a desktop application of the same name. It is geared to provide members and users with a platform for sharing of information pertaining to their game development, and a place to seek and provide help. It is a large community with over 114,000 registered members (as of March 2015), with an average of 106,000 monthly active unique users, and a high degree of activity such as the posting of tutorials and tips, sharing game development progress, and announcing the launch of a new game. However, the majority of the interactions on the forum are concerned with seeking and providing help. This study focuses on issues around community, participation, and learning within online networks and is underpinned by a concern for participatory and social experiential perspectives on learning.

In order to explore participation, an exploratory mixed-method approach was used. This involved a three-phase data collection procedure. First, observation of interaction in the community was carried out (noting the pattern of threads opened, weekly leader boards, resources, and general practices) coupled with document analysis to identify threads that reflected high participation or were deemed beneficial by interviewees. Second, online survey of 35 items including five demographic items, twenty forced 2-point semantic differential scale items, and ten 5-point Likert scale items was carried out, to measure members’ perceptions of the community and identity (n = 110 responses). Third, semi-structured sequential interviews were carried out with 21 volunteer interviewees online, using the forum’s own private messaging system over a period from August 2014 to March 2015.

Although originally conceived as an overarching study of online participation, the study became focused on the more active members of the community, and on the question as to why and how some members of online communities appear to take on helping roles. The findings from both survey and interviews showed a strong sense of community among active members, and that active members saw their identity in the online community as an extension of their off-line self.

Although open to all members, participants who volunteered to be interviewed tended to be among the more active members and many had adopted ‘caretaker’ or helper role in the community. The interviews showed that giving help was motivated by a mix of extrinsic and intrinsic elements, in particular, helpers were aware of the need to sustain the community and in many cases felt an obligation to offer help as a return or ‘pay it forward’ for the help they had received in the past. They were motivated by community mindedness, empathy, self-confidence and sense of identity. The giving of help depends on ‘mood’, this mood is generated not only when helpers feel they have the available time and relevant expertise in order to help, but also when those asking for help have asked in an appropriate manner and provided sufficient contextualisation.

In part, learning in the community is seen as a social exchange, and members put a value on the discussions they saw useful. However, this study reveals some of the problems experienced by the company behind the community, tensions among some members of the community, as well as issues pertaining to shared knowledge and artefacts. This study improves our understanding of community of practice, the provision of help, the motivation for helping, as well as the dynamics of participation in an open online community. It gives insight into the sustainability of online community by showing the motivation, strategies for, and consequences of helping. It also gives insight into how informal learning is embedded in social interactions and perceived value. The study is not a unique case but it is one of an underreported area, a highly participative community. Methodologically, this study offers mixed method approach with a strong focus on qualitative data and analysis methods, with an innovative way of triangulating data.