The current pandemic has been impacting every aspect of our lives these days. Education is no exception. In response to the pandemic, Indonesia’s Ministry of National Education has issued some policies to ensure every student and teacher’s safety and wellbeing. One of them is online learning which must be applied by schools around the archipelago to decrease the risk of contagion owing to face-to-face meetings.

“Sampoerna Academy fully supports the ministry’s directions by starting its own virtual school as of late March 2020. To make sure that learning processes are running smoothly throughout virtual schooling, we strictly monitor and focus on three main aspects: infrastructure, approach to engage students, and full support of respective parents,” stated Dr. Mustafa Guvercin (Director of Sampoerna Academy).

“Infrastructure is central to our virtual schooling as it is used to measure and improve the virtual learning process,” he added. Using the advanced tracking system that the school has put in place; the students’ attendance rate is recorded high (88.9%). This will be maintained and be improved along the way.

Another key parameter of success, said Dr. Guvercin, is the number of live sessions for the recent month which stands at 4,351. “Our school will continue to directly connect through live sessions to make sure connectivity and interactivity of students despite being conducted through virtual schooling,” he said.

The school’s system also showed that Sampoerna Academy achieved high quality learning process by measuring the number of assignment submissions and delivery of outputs. At the same time, the participation rate of virtual classes is very high, shown by a very low percentage (0.71%) of students leaving classes before they ended.

In the meantime,Dr. Guvercin mentioned that STEAM method is always applied to the virtual schooling. “The method helps children stay focused and engaged throughout the sessions,” he spoke.

STEAM method is an inquiry-based educational approach, encouraging children to gather and use evidence so that they can create knowledge or solve real-life problems by building connections amongst various subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).

The parents of Sampoerna Academy students also responded positively to the virtual schooling. Dr. Guvercin mentioned that based on parents’ feedback collected by a recent online survey on Virtual Schooling also demonstrated a favorable level of satisfaction amongst parents.

“Eighty one percent (81%) of our parents think that live sessions are enough or more than enough. Our teachers also received mostly positive responses from parents on this Virtual Schooling (97%),” Dr. Guvercin ended. (*/)