Out of the keenness of His Excellency the Dean of the Deanship of the Joint First Year, Dr. Waheeb bin Dakhilullah Al-Harbi, to develop and upgrade the quality of the academic and professional performance of the students of the deanship and to urge them to achieve more accomplishments, the Student Advisory and Support Unit, under the supervision of the Vice Dean for Educational Affairs (male section) at Al-Abdiyyah, Dr. Ahmad bin Fawzi Arba`in, organized a training course entitled, "University Life Skills: My Way to innovation". The lecture was presented by Dr. Mansur Samir Al-Sa`idi on Tuesday, 7 Safar, 1443 A.H.

The lecture, which was attended by a number of the students of the Deanship of the Joint First Year, included several main goals, most importantly:

• Bridging the gap between the study requirements, university life, and previous study phases.
• Encourage students to keep developing themselves and acquiring skills.
• Undertaking the required tasks and activities using systematic and scientific methods, instead of wrong or ineffective habits.
• Increasing productivity and performance efficiency as well as the level of educational achievement.
• Increasing student's competitiveness and constant pursuit of scientific and academic excellence.
• Performing tasks on time and with suitable effort, and investing time and effort correctly.

At the beginning of the lecture, a manual activity was implemented by a number of students to give them training on how to achieve creativity. At the end of the training session, the students were divided into 4 groups, each headed by a leader. Each group presented some of their personal ideas and how to deal with them using skills and awareness or the stages in the learning skills table. The trainer also touched upon the secrets of the human mind, focusing on 4 points. and innovation strategies, such as the SCAMPER strategy, Random images, and other effective strategies used to develop innovation. In addition, he tackled a number of university life skills which help in increasing the level of educational achievement and knowledge development among students.