The spotlight is on Muhyiddin Hayat, lecturer in Informatics, Universitas Muhammadiyah Makassar, Indonesia

The Universitas Muhammadiyah Makassar, located in Sulawesi, an island of eastern Indonesia, has the guiding principle of instilling in students broad Islamic and scientific knowledge. It offers graduate courses in seven faculties covering teacher training, medicine, engineering, agriculture, social and political science, Islamic studies, and 47 study programs including informatics.

Mr. Muhyiddin Hayat is a faculty member who has been teaching in the Informatics program since 2018. He holds a master’s degree in Informatics from the Universitas Hasanuddin and has held CEO positions in the software industry.

Muhammadiyah Makassar University became an Oracle Academy member in 2019 and currently is implementing the free Oracle Academy Cloud Program.

Oracle Academy: When did you start using Oracle Academy resources?

Muhyiddin Hayat: Our teaching of computer science is very recent; in fact, we added the Informatics department only three years ago. We created our curriculum and, when adopting Oracle Academy curriculum in 2019, began blending those learning resources with our own.

We incorporate all or parts of Oracle Academy’s Java Foundations, Java Programming, and Database Design and Programming with SQL courses. We also are implementing the Oracle Cloud Free Tier resources. In addition, we dip into Education Bytes and Workshops in a Box.

Oracle Academy: Can you tell us to what extent you use the Oracle Academy curriculum attached to each of those?

Muhyiddin Hayat: Certainly. For Java we teach Java Foundations to all new students and use 100% of the Oracle Academy materials provided for this course. In the case of Java Programming, which students take in the third semester, we mainly use the materials around data structure and object-oriented programming, blending them with other elements of our curriculum.

On the database side, we use Database Design and Programming with SQL in its entirety. As part of this subject, we get students to work on case studies referenced to Oracle Academy content. Examples include designing databases for medical records, sales territories, library management, or tracer studies.

In addition, we have them explore the structure of our own Academic Information System database, a web-based system in use by most higher education institutions in Indonesia. In this lab exercise, students use each table in the database to run every SQL command in the curriculum.

We cross-check all case studies to see if teams are producing the desired data by means of the Ensuring Quality Query Results section of the database design course. They love it.

Oracle Academy: And what expectations do you have for the Oracle Academy Cloud Program?

Muhyiddin Hayat: Oracle Cloud is a gift, because here in Eastern Indonesia we do not have the bandwidth or resources to do it alone. Being free to use it as Oracle Academy members makes it even more attractive. And having one cloud account per student is terrific. Since the Oracle Cloud Free Tier is quite new to us and we’ve been visited by a pandemic, we have not yet implemented a formal cloud-related curriculum. However, we have begun using the Oracle Autonomous Database as virtual lab infrastructure to support our web programming and database systems courses.

So far, our teaching begins with Oracle Academy cloud account activation, and then basic concepts, creating databases, virtual machines, how to connect to DB /VM instances, and installing apps that will be used later on such as NodeJS, MongoDB, Nginx, and Port Forwarding.

In terms of future curriculum structure, we are aiming at introducing the Autonomous Transaction Processing self-driving database in semester 3 to a class of 84 students. In semesters 4 and 5, we roll out the use of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute VMs in our advanced web programming courses.

Our goal is to utilize Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in such a way that students feel the applications they are working on are in a production environment, not a development environment. This is in line with university objectives to prepare students to be work ready when they enter industry.

Oracle Academy: Quite a program! Thank you. And you also mentioned Education Bytes.

Muhyiddin Hayat: Yes, we make use of these useful modules for various short courses. For example, we teach load balancing in distributed systems by combining the content of Oracle Academy Education Bytes with internal materials based on microservice best practices.

Oracle Academy: What is your overall opinion of Oracle Academy as an aid to teaching your Informatics program?

Muhyiddin Hayat: I would say Oracle Academy is fundamental to teach beginners in Java and databases and more advanced students too. I have never seen another curriculum this good. The resources are well structured in providing a general understanding of programming languages and databases as well as specifics to the tools provided by Oracle Academy.

Naturally we are extremely satisfied with the Oracle Cloud provision and Oracle APEX low code development environments for hands-on practice, project assignments, and for reducing VM resource usage.

Oracle Academy has been excellent in providing our lecturers with the training necessary to deliver the material. And we also benefit from the latest infrastructure to support the learning process.

Above all, we want our students to master the latest in computer science technology in order to get jobs connected to application and database infrastructure built with cloud platforms. And because our program is comparatively new, we are inundated with enrollments, and that obliges us to update the curriculum regularly.

Our curriculum development uses the outcome-based learning method. In other words, our desired outcome is that students get jobs in industries that need staff well trained in computer technologies and especially cloud. Everything at Muhammadiyah Makassar is geared around that.

Thank you, Muhyiddin Hayat, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.