Microsoft and Gadjah Mada University (UGM) worked together on integrating the eLisa e-learning platform into theOffice 365 for Education productivity package, and the result is the eLisa 365 which is available for 6000 UGM students as the pilot project. The system is expected to cover all 60.000 UGM students as well as 6.000 lecturers and academic staff in the near future.
UGM’s Head of Information Resource and System Center Widyawan mentioned in the press release, “We have applied Office 365 for Education as a pilot project since last December 2013. Thanks to a quality partnership with UGM’s Microsoft Innovation Center that we have finished the integration between Office 365 and eLisa (UGM’s e-learning portal) process, and we name the resulted system as eLisa 365.”
“With eLisa 365, all students and academic staff may access the whole Office 365 features via their own academic e-mail (Single Sign-On). Thus, the collaboration and e-learning, such as communities for lectures, marking announcement, online quiz discussion, material upload, and many others, would be easier to be done. This is particularly due to the status of Office 365 as an open platform in which its Application Programming Interface (API) is compatible with non-Microsoft platform, like eLisa,” he continued.
The collaboration has put UGM a step closer to its vision of adapting information technology to support the learning activities. Previously, the University has partnered with Moco to convert books published by UGM publication into digital books (e-book) which are accessible via mobile platform.
UGM’s rector Dwikorita Karnawati stated, “The strategic partnership between UGM and Microsoft accommodates our vision of becoming a national innovative world class university. With Microsoft’s best technologies, we are certain that the learning activities can run in a much modern and productive way, so that UGM may compete at the global stage and contribute more to Indonesia.”
A bit about the Office 365 for Education, the product consists of a number of Microsoft Office Online, chatting apps, and a collaboration between Skype and Lync, as well as an unlimited OneDrive cloud storage service. All those features are administered by one administration system (unified admin experience).
“The strategic partnership with UGM is a token of Microsoft’s commitment to level up the Indonesian education system. With Office 365 for Education, we expect that UGM’s academic ecosystem would be much more productive, so that high quality graduates who are accustomed to highly competitive and dynamic mobile industry can be produced more intensively,” Microsoft’s Public Sector Director Kertapradana Subagus ended.