ince March 16, 2020, President University has established the online learning system for all undergraduate and postgraduate study programs that brought a number of changes to the learning process. This change was felt by Communication Studies students batch 2017 who are running a collaborative project of three subjects namely PR Research and Evaluation, PR Production, and Event Management.
In this period of time, the student’s creativity in facing a crisis is tested. An event project that was initially planned to be held offline had to be transformed entirely into an online event due to the COVID-19 crisis. After a very thorough brainstorming session to keep conducting this event well, a creative student platform named Communication Stride (CommStride) was established to realize anti-passive action through communication.
The students of the Communications Program voiced the importance of maintaining their own health and preservation of the earth through the hashtag #JagaDiriJagaBumi.
Melinda Stefani as Project Manager explained that the system changes at this event required them to change the series of events to be online-based. For example, they hold online events such as educational content publications and contests/challenges through Kompasiana, Medium, and social media, namely Line, Twitter, TikTok, dan Instagram (@commstride).
“Because the social media content at this event is the main event, our focus is really on social media. We have to think more to produce contents that are in line with the current issue and interesting to the audience at the same time,” said Natasya Aline, who is responsible for social media content.
“The challenge in transforming this event into an online one lies in the publication schedule intensity that had gotten significantly higher as we had to post everyday. Then, we also had to look for ideas for our publication content, making sure that they would be interesting and beneficial for the audience to create high engagement,” she added.
The series of competition that was held by CommStride had ended on 12 April 2020 as it managed to attract the attention of many netizens. Without a doubt, this event has become a very good platform for students to be more aware of environmental issues and particularly supporting the government’s movement #dirumahaja. Through this event, the students also encouraged the people to keep contributing environmental issues’ advocacy even though they stayed at home.