Acknowledging Students’ Growing Interest in AI

A Story About Arrival Dwi Sentosa, Lecturer at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bangkit Machine Learning Instructor

Educational institutions and industries each have their strengths in providing tech training. Universities excel at solidifying a fundamental theory, while industries focus on implementing cutting-edge technologies. Arrival Dwi Sentosa (27), a Lecturer at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), perceives that these two sectors can collaborate in shaping tech talents that can impact Indonesia's future.

Seeing the students’ growing interest in AI, Arrival—that’s what he’s called—thinks that Bangkit is the best place to nurture this youth generation’s emerging passion. Therefore, believing that academia and industry can cooperate in cultivating Indonesian students’ interest in AI, he decided to contribute to Bangkit 2024 Batch 1 as a Machine Learning Instructor.

How was Arrival’s journey as an educator and trainer in Bangkit? Let’s read the whole story!

Teaching Is Not a Job; It’s a Calling

Arrival was born and raised in Bandung by a mother dedicated to education. She established a kindergarten in Bandung, where Arrival has been involved as a teacher since high school. In his mother’s kindergarten, Arrival taught the kindergartners how to draw and sometimes showed the kids animation created by a computer program.

“Teaching is not a job; it’s a calling,” Arrival’s mother said.

Surprisingly, Arrival found his true calling in teaching. That's why, after getting his master's in Intelligence Systems from ITB, Arrival decided to teach at the university.

Arrival began his journey at ITB as a lecturer. His path crossed with Bangkit, a career readiness program initiated by Google and supported by GoTo, Tokopedia, and Traveloka. This program is known in ITB because ITB is one of Bangkit’s partner universities. Moreover, in 2024, Bangkit incorporated AI into its curriculum.

“We, the faculty members, often talk about generative AI. Unfortunately, this topic has yet to be part of our curriculum.”

Therefore, seeing Bangkit could allow him to explore AI more and share his insights with students all over Indonesia, Arrival was excited to contribute to this program as an instructor.

Strengthen Fundamentals on Campus, Have Hands-On Experience in Bangkit

Knowing that Bangkit accommodated a big group of students from all backgrounds, Arrival was excited to teach in this program. He was also assigned as a Machine Learning Instructor, aligned with his expertise.

“The university might offer a robust curriculum and foundational knowledge. However, in terms of exploring and experimenting with new tools, we have limited resources. Fortunately, Bangkit allowed me to teach students while exploring various new technologies.”

Arrival believes it’s essential for students to learn in Bangkit so they can keep up to date with current technology. He found that Bangkit 2024, with an AI curriculum integrated into each learning path, can expose students to Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM).

“Students can strengthen their fundamentals on campus and have hands-on experience in Bangkit.”

Although Arrival found the learning pace in Bangkit quite intense, he was impressed by the up-to-date Machine Learning curriculum. Using Google’s tools helped students understand machine learning better because learning this technology from books can be confusing since so many statistics are involved.

Excited to See Students’ Passion for AI

As an instructor, Arrival found that having the Bangkit graduates assigned as mentors to guide the cohorts helped him deliver the training session. Another memorable aspect of teaching in Bangkit was reading the students' post-session feedback.

“I was excited seeing the students’ fascination with learning AI, as evidenced by their constructive feedback. The feedback I got from Bangkit was insightful.”

The Bangkit learning session became a memorable experience for Arrival. He observed that his students, who were initially reluctant to learn Mathematics, finally understood the significance of this subject in Machine Learning, even AI. Moreover, the students’ enthusiasm for learning often extended the 120-minute training sessions.

“Bangkit participants are enthusiastic about learning. There were always questions during the sessions. Even outside of class time, 10-15 cohorts would reach out with questions on LinkedIn or email.”

The cohorts’ enthusiasm demonstrated that Bangkit students are of good overall quality. One area where Bangkit could improve is offering more specialized courses in machine Learning that align with students’ interests.

3 Tips for Learning AI from Arrival Dwi Sentosa

As a practitioner lecturer and AI Engineer at the Sustainable Living Lab (SL2), Arrival wants to offer students some advice on learning AI.

#1 Start by Strengthening Your Fundamental

Arrival believes mastering the fundamentals is the first step in any tech learning journey. Skipping over the basics to the latest trends isn’t advisable. A strong foundation will enable digital talents to adapt to new technologies quickly.

#2 Develop a Clear Learning Roadmap

Another significant aspect of learning AI is having a clear roadmap. Students who need a roadmap can benefit from programs like Bangkit, which offers a structured curriculum from start to finish/ Self-taught digital talents often have knowledge gaps.

#3 Be a Lifelong Learner

For Arrival, an excellent digital talent is always eager to learn, especially those aspiring to be AI experts. An AI expert must be willing to keep up with the rapidly changing environment.

Those are Arrival's three tips. He emphasizes that the success of digital talents in learning, growing, and impacting Indonesia is linked to collaboration between academia and industry. Bangkit is one of the ideal places for these two institutions to work together.

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