IAIN-Manado, Friday, 19/10/2021, the students of English Education Study Program consisting of Nofikasari Gobel, Jihan Fahira Songkaton, Dimas Prasetya, and Anggie Moobaya, collaborated with the students of University of Gadjah Mada, National University of Singapore and a one member of Netherland-Indonesia Alzheimer Sience Team, Manik Kharismayekti, MD., M. Sc in 24th Webinar Events Talk entitled “The Intersection of Culture, Sience, and Society”. This Webinar was held by the Language, Art, and Culture Management Department of Gadjah Mada Vocational School and conducted online in Zoom platform from 15:00 PM to 17:00 PM Jakarta Time (GMT+7).

First of all, the webinar was opened officially by the master of ceremony Sonia Valda Hersalenka and then followed by a welcoming speech from the head of Applied English Study Program, Yohana Ika Harnitasari. After the speech, the event continued to the material presentation session that was led by the moderator, Nadiva Rizkita Agustina.

At first, the presentation session was started with a topic “Borobudur and Locality Through Digital Era” by the first group of Gadjah Mada University that consisted of Dini Cahya Sari, Abdiel Brain Imankasih, Athif Fakhri Firmansyah, and Afta Zahradianti Asaputri. In general, their discussion focused on Development Strategies Through Digital Era at Borobudur Temple in Pandemic Era. In addition, the strategies were intended to cope with the decreasing number of visitors of the temple. In 2019, the total amount of tourists reached 4.49 milion visitors but during the pandemic in 2020, it decreased to only 996 K visitors. There are two strategies that had been presented. The first was social media platform used to promote Borobudur such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and websites. the second was the promotion of Youth or Influencer for example by doing giveaway and indirect endorsement. Besides the strategies, they also provided the efforts of government in supporting the Borobudur temple such as providing innovation for mapping the business potential of tourism sector, creative economy, and also business opportunities, for instance, by conducting Digitalization in tourism, the adaptation of the pandemic situation by strictly implementing health protocols, and collaborating with the stakeholders of the tourism sector and the creative economy.

On the second session, the group from Manado State Institute of Islamic Studies talking about “Maintaining Integrity of Intellectuallly in Cultural Society”. To begin with, as the first speaker, Nofikasari, explained what intellectual is. Next, Dimas spoke why we need to maintain the integrity of our intellectuality and then he continued by giving comprehensive explanations about the correlations between intellectual, culture, and society. The discussion continued to a brief explanation about case and problem solving by Anggie. Lastly, the presentation is ended with a conclusion from Jihan.

In the third session, another group of Gadjah Mada Univesity consiting of Aryanti Kharidah Mumtaz, Ariendresti Setyaningtyas, Azizah Ayu Nursuami Sugiharto, and Clara Divi Avissa, presented a topic about “Korean Wave on E-commerce”. In their discussion, generally was focused on why E-commerce use korean artists in increasing brand awareness of people, consumer’s ability to identify, recognize, and remember a brand. In summary, E-commerce used korean artist as brand ambassador and guest star for spreading their brand since korean artists have a huge numbers of fans in Indonesia.

For the fourth session, two students of National University of Singapore, Shermain Teo and Tammy Low, describing about “Online Intercultural Exchange x Learner Autonomy”. Their research, in general, searched how the engagement levels of tertiary students in online intercultural exchanges affected by learner autonomy are. In addition, they had a hypothesis that “less learner autonomy (more guided) interaction would result in higher engagement”. In order to find how the engagement levels, they used Backchannel Responses from Duncan and Fiske in 1977 that consists of Head Nods, Smiles, M-hm, Sentence Completion, Request for Clarification, and Brief Statement. In their findings, they found that nonverbal responses such as Head Nods and Smiles were often done. However, even though the non-verbal responses are higher than the verbal responses, in the intercultural conversations, the discussion’s topics was started from most superficial topic such as education and hobbies to the most sensitive topics like religion, culture, and political over the time.

At the last session, the participants were having a guest from Holland, Ms. Manik Kharismayekti that discussed about “Know Dementia and be Part of a Dementia-friendly Community”. In her speech, Ms. Manik showed how dementia symptoms were, by providing the pic of Dementia Umbrella. According to the picture, Dementia encompassed the symptoms of the memory loss and other loss of thinking abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life. For instance, the symptoms are Alzheimer’s, Lewy Body Dementia, Vascular Dementia, Frontemporal Dementia, others: Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Mixed Dementia: Dementia from more than one cause. Furthermore, from her explanation, there were some risk factors of dementia which divided into two, non-modifiable risk factors and modifiable risk factors. For non-modifiable risk factors, they consisted of increasing age and 20 genes. However, dementia was not a normal part of aging. On the modifiable risk factors, they were (1) less education, (2) hearing loss, (3) a traumatic brain injury, (4) hypertension, (5) alcohol using, (6) obesity, (7) social isolation, (8) physical inactivity, (9) air pollution, (10) diabetes, (11) smoking, and (12) depression. If we are able to modify all of these factors, we can prevent of or delay 40% of dementia, for example by exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, taking a healthy diet, taking care our heart, protecting our head, staying mentally active, and being social active. In addition, Ms. Manik also explained how we can support people with dementia. She suggested that we need to create a dementia-friendly community, a place or culture where the people and their caregivers were empowered, supported, and included in society.

In the end, the participants had a photo session together and finally the webinar was officially closed by Sonia, the MC. *RH