Mercu Buana University and Google Indonesia Launched Online Final Assignment

Mercu Buana University (UMB) recently announced that they’ve collaborated with Google Indonesia to launch an online final assignment program which would be applied towards their students. This program will be run in two forms: UMB Mobile and Online Final Assignment that is accessible through Desktop. Both are intended to intensify student-lecturer interaction regarding on finishing the assignment, even during the thesis supervision period.

As BeritaSatu reported, UMB’s Rector Dr. Arissetyanto Nugroho stated, “With Online Final Assignment, consultation and supervision activities and interaction between students and supervisors can be done anytime.”

He further claimed that Google app for online final assignment is exclusive to UMB, at least for now. He ensured that his team would do anything possible to prevent any online fraud and attack. “Including the materials for thesis, they can’t be results of plagiarism. We keep all the data. Any plagiarism will be detected,” he confidently told Indopos.

Sutisna Mulyana, Kibar’s Project Manager for Google Application Education, Google’s local partner, said that Google will keep everything safe. He explained that Google will provide supports to the implementation of this program, like allowing the usaga of Google Doc, in which more than one users can use it at the same time. As for e-mail support from Gmail and data storage from Google Drive, Google will give 50.000 free accounts with Unlimited Google Drive included.

“Lecturers may also revise directly without having to deal with the paper or even re-print the assignment, so it would be highly paperless,” he claimed.

Nugroho also revealed that this program is expected to facilitate students who also work somewhere else as well as employees who take courses at the university. The program is also aimed to make every administrative work related to final assignment much simpler.

However, this program is not designed to lessen or even eliminate student-lecturer direct interaction. Nugroho stated that this program would only covers 50% of the process, while the rest would still be covered by direct meetings. This is fundamental to keep the final assignment’s quality.