During the COVID-19 pandemic, when all lectures are carried out online, many new creative ideas soon emerge despite the pressure. One of those ideas came from the Information System Department of Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) who started a collaboration with Vrent, the first electric motorbike rental service start-up company in Indonesia, for their Final Project for a course subject called Multimedia and The Web. All activities, starting from lectures to assignments, are carried out online to provide students with the real experience of responding to industry needs.

“Multimedia and The Web is a course subject that requires students to create 3 projects for their Final Examination. One of those projects requires students to create an analysis and deliverable user experience. For this particular assignment, we have contacted Vrent since February and decided to use Vrent Application’s User Experience (UX) analysis as our students’ Final Project,” said Calandra Alencia Haryani, S.E., S.SI., M.T.I. – Multimedia and The Web Lecturer in Information System UPH.

Calandra explains that as a new start-up, Vrent needs to analyze their UX application in order to gain income from the app’s usage. On the other hand, students can also gain a new experience in an industry that is highly relevant to their field.

“For the project, students are divided into eight groups of 2-3 people. Each group will distribute an online survey to the public regarding their experience in using Vrent. All surveys and analysis will be summarized in a final report, and lastly, each group will have to present their survey results online in front of the lecturers and Vrent’s leaders including Vrent’s CEO (Chief Executive Officer) – Yucuanto Susetyo, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Vrent – Joshua Tampubolon, and Vrent’s UI/UX Manager – Luthfi Almahdi. Each reviewer will assess and provide students with further recommendations during the online presentation and Q&A session. Hopefully, this will help students to gain feedback that corresponds to the industry needs,” Calandra explained.

According to Calandra, this collaboration with Vrent is beneficial, especially to give students the experience of creating a user experience analysis, which corresponds greatly to the current needs of the industry. A similar statement was also delivered by was also admitted by Joshua Tampubolon – Vrent’s CTO.

“Even in the middle of this less conducive situation, we are really excited about this collaboration with UPH. The purpose of this collaboration is to give these students a real experience in developing our mobile (Vrent), especially in dealing with the UX of our application. We are really excited to discuss and exchange ideas with UPH students,” said Joshua.

During the learning process, Calandra constantly opens discussions through online forums, facilitated by the Education Technology Department of UPH and also through other means of communication. Despite being done through an online platform, Calandra thinks that her role as a lecturer can still function optimally.
Aside from a collaboration project, right now, students of UPH Information System still have to do the other Final Projects which includes creating Instagram content design for Information System UPH and creating a tutorial about a certain subject that they have learned, all in which will be done online.

“We hope that our students would not just ‘finish’ their projects, but for them to be impactful. As an example, through their tutorial video project, they can educate the public about Information Systems; especially when almost everything is done online now. We hope that the public can find the tutorial videos that we poster in our class’ You Tube Channel to be useful,” Calandra stated.

UPH Information System is committed to equipping its students comprehensively through academic learning and real-life experience through our partnering industries. So that in the future, graduates of UPH Information System can grow to be creative, innovative, competitive, and professional individuals.

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