Berita

COVID-19 Pandemic has been very challenging to the educational area, especially for educational institutes including schools and universities. Even now after the situation is getting far more better, the challenge is still here as post-pandemic life is different from during the pandemic. Therefore, on March 16, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) held University Leaders’ Forum with several international partners under the theme “The Innovation Challenge and The Pandemic Legacy” at the AR Fachruddin A Building.

The agenda was divided into two sessions with different topics. In the first session, under the topic “Further efforts and innovation in learning during the pandemic”, three speakers were giving a presentation which are Prof. Dr. Ir. Gunawan Budiyanto, MP., IPM., ASEAN Eng. (UMY, Indonesia), Prof. Ir. Ts. Abu Hassan Abdullah (Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia), and Prof. Yinghue Chen, Ph.D. (Asia University, Taiwan).

Prof. Dr. Ir. Gunawan Budiyanto, MP., IPM., ASEAN Eng., mentioned that UMY has been doing innovations during the pandemic and chose not to close the campus, “But we tried to apply the strategy and continue campus activity such as the combination of WFH and WFO, preparing health facilities and early detection system, isolation center as well as mobile hospital. We also have vaccines for students and lecturers and most importantly implemented blended learning.”

Similar to UMY, Prof. Ir. Ts. Abu Hassan Abdullah also explained that UNIMAP made a new system to make sure the students get the best experience even during the pandemic, “We have several things done by the UNIMAP such as learning management system, blended learning, peer teaching group, massive online course, micro-prudential, as well as the digital lab.”

Meanwhile, Prof. Yinghue Chen, Ph.D., emphasized that students need to connect the dot well, “The students need to connect the dots because they have already the pieces and the lecturer’s task is to make them together and students be able to connect the dots.”

Continued by session two, “How does technology assist organizations in delivering more significant research impact?” is the topic for this session. Dr. Rhoderick V. Nuncio (De La Salle University, The Philippines) and Prof. Dr. Antonio Moreno Sandoval (Autonoma de Madrid, Spain) were presented to discuss the topic.

According to Dr. Rhoderick V. Nuncio, De La Salle University has done different kinds of systems, “We have done doing in-house online capacity building sessions for teachers along with continuous organizational communication and consultations.” Rhoderick also highlighted the challenge soon including the rise of AI-enabled learning tools, labor displacement, and academe and industry mismatch.

At the same time, Prof. Dr. Antonio Moreno Sandoval explained nowadays situation where things are changed during the post-pandemic, “IT companies and institutions were prepared for non-face-to-face work. Researchers in companies continue with teleworking measures and researchers in university labs have returned to face-to-face work because there is a lot of supervision and training for young researchers. On the other side, politicians were quick to raise funds to implement the measures.”