Indonesian university creates game-changing courses for higher education with Azure-based solutions

Founded in 1984, Universitas Terbuka is Indonesia’s state university based in Jakarta that offers quality higher education through distance learning, especially for students with smaller budgets or who live in isolated areas. With more than one million students enrolled, the institution decided to expand its curriculum by creating the Indonesia Cyber Education Institute (ICE Institute) in 2021. Students could obtain credits here that would be recognized by other educational institutions as well.

“ICE Institute is a marketplace for online courses open to anyone in the country. It aims to help the government provide more access to people who want to obtain higher education for the first time, but may have other commitments that prevent them from attending courses in person. The institute encourages flexible learning with subjects offered individually,” says Prof. Paulina Pannen, Director of ICE Institute.

Gaming in the cloud

One of the most popular tech industries in Indonesia to get into is game development, which was valued at about one billion dollars in 2021. However, the government noted that most developers were contracted from outside the country. In addition to increasing the nation’s talent pool, the government also wanted to improve digital literacy among its citizens.  

“ICE Institute’s goal was to create Game Development courses—we wanted to create the modules and learning platform locally. Also, we needed to ensure that the games produced in the students’ capstone projects could be commercialized,” explains Pannen. “To achieve all that, we needed a platform that would not only support classes online, but also be accessible to students that don’t own high-performing devices,” explains Pannen.

Having already used Microsoft in its environment, ICE Institute reached out to Microsoft to help create its new learning platform. “We collaborated with Microsoft because we are familiar with the products and they have a good reputation among institutions. We also chose PCMan as a partner, who did a great job helping us deploy the ICE Institute platform in 2021,” says Pannen.

PCMan proposed an Azure virtual lab solution powered with Graphics processing unit (GPU) capabilities and collaboration tools, allowing students from all over the country to work together.
 “We chose Cloudswyft Solutions based on Azure Lab Services so that participants located across Indonesia can use basic computers to join the six-month program. All they need is internet access—it’s that simple,” says Pony Halim, VP of Technology at PCMan. “Our online courses also have international reach since Azure supports Open edX Learning Management System (LMS), which makes lessons accessible for people in countries such as Thailand, Korea, and China,” says Pannen, and effective in terms of the available cost models, data types and sources it captures.”

Becoming a dev in no time

Since starting the course, ICE Institute has had 672 students from 166 different universities in Indonesia enrolled in the semester-long project, a lot more than anticipated. “We didn’t know home many students will join the program from the beginning, but with Azure, it was very easy to scale the virtual lab to accommodate them,” details Halim. “In preparation for the new course, with Microsoft’s help, we also trained the teachers on how to use the new technology before launching their new online classes.”

The institution has given a lot of support to its students, especially those with a lower digital literacy. “We guide them from registration to finally getting a certificate. Some of the things we offer are video guides, a FAQ section on our website, and even build a relationship with them through social media and influencers,” says Pannen. 

One of the most important features of the new courses is flexibility, which has enabled people to go through the courses in their own time. “Students don’t have to worry about missing out on chapters or being pressured to finish a course within a certain date,” explains Pannen. “Games that are developed in the course as part of assignments are also stored on OneDrive, which can be accessed at later stages if needed.”

ICE Institute has since been raising high potentials in the gaming industry. “Using Azure Lab Services has successfully transformed participants with no IT background into game developers. We believe that by guiding students properly and providing them with the right tools, they can access the global digital market,” says Pannen. “At the end of the program, we incubate the top  games from each category (entertainment game, serious game, educational game) with Microsoft’s help in order to drive the commercial value of our graduate’s work.”

On to the next level

Following the success of the Game Development courses, ICE Institute plans to maximize its virtual lab, which students previously used only a few weeks after the program’s start. “Now, we want to make the virtual lab and Microsoft 365 be the go-to tools from the beginning, so we can centralize all of the materials to create an even more flexible learning experience,” explains Pannen. ICE Institute also plans to build a new chatbot for students to facilitate open communication with the platform.

“We are the only institute that offers game development courses fully online, and we’ve become a model for various parties who want to develop multi-credential programs. So working with Microsoft on this has really enabled us to not only help those in our institute but those around us as well,” concludes Pannen.