XL Axiata Group Head Corporate Communication Tri Wahyuningsih said, “Up until this year, a total of 850 students from 6 classes have graduated from the XLFL Program. With the addition of the new class, there are currently 300 students in the program. Although it was not made a special consideration during the selection, we are glad to see that the program’s students and its alumni are originally from almost every province in Indonesia. There are students from Aceh, Java, Bali, Lombok, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, NTT, to Sorong, Papua. Some alumni are now working in their respective hometowns through various business, governance, and social project activities.”
The students who completed their study this year came from 35, prominent state and private universities in various municipalities. Meanwhile, the new students are from 45 colleges in 20 provinces. From the gender perspective, their composition is well balanced, consisting of 72 women and 78 men. They also have a multitude of different academic backgrounds, from both science and social science. Indeed, the XLFL program does not limit participating students based on their discipline of science. Its curriculum emphasizes more on the development of soft skills.
The new XL Future Leaders participants are students in their second or third year in university, or currently in their third and fifth semester, from both science and social science disciplines. XL Future Leaders is open for every college major because the curriculum on offer puts more emphasis on the mastery of various soft skills built upon effective communication skills and the ability to manage changes, as well as innovation, and entrepreneurship.
These acquired soft skills would aid the alumni in adapting with their work environment and the activities within. They would be able to work and communicate more effectively and implement critical thinking. Since its first inception, the curriculum has been designed around the progress of the digital age until several years in the future. Therefore, it is hoped that what is taught in class would stay relevant for application at times when digitalization continues to influence more and more aspects of daily lives.
Creating IoT-based solutions
At the same time of XL Future Leaders National Conference 2019 during the weekend of October 15 to 17, 2019, an exhibition was held to display various prototypes of innovative Internet of Things (IoT) based services created by XLFL students as one of their study assignments. As many as 25 IoT prototypes were conceived by students and evaluated by three judges to choose the best among them. The three judges are experts in the field of IoT: Teguh Prasetya, Head of the Indonesian IoT Association, Soegijanto, Senior Manager Business Development Polytron, and Feby Sallyanto, Chief Enterprise and SME Officer XL Axiata.
Some IoT prototypes made by the students revolved around public service solutions involving aspects such as waste management, disaster preparedness, water source management, transportation improvements, to endangered species conservation. A number of prototypes were meant as agriculture solutions, dealing with matters like soil condition monitoring, fertilizer needs, to plant health. Others were aimed at helping farmers, and also small and medium business in managing stocks and supplies of goods. Individual needs were not left behind, with solutions designed around monitoring children with special needs, personal health, and also the health of pregnant mothers.
Class of 2017/ Batch 6 was tasked to build IoT-based digital solutions, so that the students would be able to adapt with the latest situation in the industry which, in general, is getting ever more inclined towards digital technology. Moreover, in the era of Industry 4.0 that every trend in the industry is heading to, IoT technology is expected to become a primary foundation. The introduction of IoT technology to students would enable them to adapt towards the technology, thereby preparing them for solutions built around IoT in the professional world.
In organizing the IoT project, XLFL was supported by 9 campuses. They are the Bogor Agricultural University, the Polytechnic Institute of Jakarta, the Sandhy Putra Jakarta Telecommunication Engineering Academy, the Indonesia Education University, the Polytechnic Institute of Bandung, the Gadjah Mada University, the Polytechnic Institute of Semarang, the Brawijaya University, and the Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya.