Supporting Online Lecture and Merdeka Belajar Program, ITB Develops LMS Edunex
By Vera Citra Utami
Editor Vera Citra Utami
BANDUNG, itb.ac.id – To support online learning or e-learning, Institut Teknologi Bandung has developed the newest and more modern Learning Management System (LMS), entitled Edunex. Other than its capability to accommodate a large number of users simultaneously, the system is also very easy to be used by the users, especially lecturers and students.
Not only to be utilized for teaching-learning through blended learning for internal ITB stakeholders but the system also able to support and provide Merdeka Belajar Program and Merdeka Campus from the Ministry of Education and Culture Republic of Indonesia.
ITB Director of Educational Development, Yusep Rosmansyah, Ph.D., explained that the education management system can be categorized into two systems, which are LMS and education administration management.
Currently, ITB already has a prime education administration management system, but the previous LMS still accommodated by old applications that are vulnerable to traffic if there are thousands of users or more. Whereas, the number of Merdeka Belajar students can reach millions of people.
Therefore, ITB Director of Education Development has developed the new LMS that is more user-friendly (easier to use) and scalable (designed to be able to run on cloud servers and serve millions of users).
One of the positive sides of the COVID-19 pandemic is the learning process is 100% online. In this situation, the old LMS is certainly not reliable, therefore the development of Edunex is accelerated. Currently, Edunex can be accessed simultaneously by hundreds of lecturers that pioneered in contributing to “Pemutakhiran Bahan Kuliah ITB” program, along with thousands of students for lectures and exams. “We are testing the Edunex this month by increasing the simultaneous number of users, to prepare for the Final Examination for ITB students and other organizations that need it,” he said when interviewed by ITB Public Relations, Tuesday (21/4/2020).
Besides of its user-friendliness and scalability, LMS Edunex is superior in several aspects, which are (1) expandability, so it can accommodate new features that are specifically for certain prepared study programs’ needs; (2) compatibility, from its easiness to copy-paste the formula from Microsoft Equation and YouTube videos’ embed; (3) interactivity, which is the availability of communication platform between lecturer and students, whether it is a synchronous or asynchronous forum; (4) seamless integration, is the data integration of class, lecturer, students, as well as SSO (Single Sign-On) feature with the campus administration management system; (5) payment integration, which this new LMS has the interconnection feature with national online payment platform; (6) moodle data import; and (7) domestic cloud server, which the location of the data center is in the territory of the Republic of Indonesia.
Advantaging this year’s National Education Day momentum, and as a form of support to the Ministry of Education and Culture’s program “Merdeka Belajar and Merdeka Campus”, ITB officially launched LMS Edunex v4.0 on Saturday, May 2nd, 2020. Related with the adage “content is the king, the platform is the queen”, Pemutakhiran Bahan Kuliah program is running parallel by utilizing Edunex.
After the launch, the next plan is to enhance the teaching and lecture material. Other than to fulfill the purpose of ITB internal online lecture, LMS Edunex v4.0 is also served as the platform for Lifelong Education, such as Merdeka Belajar, Executive Program, and Extension Class.
With the support from cloud server provider partners, other than to accommodate millions of non-ITB students, Edunex also offers services of the LMS platform itself through software-as-a-service (SaaS) scheme, for example for other colleges to conduct online mass simultaneous final examinations or entry examination, and through the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) scheme, for example LMS services for other organizations.
Reporter: Adi Permana
Translator: Evita Sonny
Translator: Evita Sonny