Designing an Application for Down Syndrome Sufferers, A Team of UMM Won a National Scientific Writing Competition

Author : Humas | Thursday, January 12, 2023 07:51 WIB

Two UMM students, who successfully earned the first winner of a national scientific writing competition held by the Darussalam University of Gontor. (Foto: Istimewa)

Again, the University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM) students obtained a national achievement. This time, the team successfully brought the first winner of a national scientific writing competition at the 2022 Yofest event held by the Darussalam University of Gontor last December. Respectively, the students are Haddad Richard from the Arabic Language Education Department and Imelda Azaliya Rahma from the Informatics Engineering Department.

Haddad - his familiar nickname - said he is fond of participating in competitions until he was informed about a contest raising the theme of Teachers’ Resilience in the Era of Education Disruption. Eventually, the two students formulated an idea. They wrote a scientific paper entitled The Perspectives of the Qur’an of Down Syndrome Children with Ma’unah Software in Islamic Religion Studies in Pronouncing Hijaiyah Letters.

With the work, they passed the first stage and became the first winner. Related to the raised theme, Haddad sees down syndrome children have difficulty pronouncing hijaiyah sounds correctly. Furthermore, learning facilities for down syndrome children have not existed yet.

“Then, viewing those issue, we initiate to design an application called Ma’unah. It aims to facilitate down syndrome children in their learning process, especially when it is related to Islamic studies in pronouncing hijaiyah sounds,” said Haddad, the UMM student in Batch 2020.

Lastly, he expects his application design to benefit other down syndrome sufferers, primarily assisting in reciting the Holy Qur’an and pronouncing hijaiyah letters. Haddad emphasized that anyone can study Islamic studies, including those with special needs.

“We will certainly work hard to complete the application design of Ma’unah. Mainly, it can help and benefit to those who rarely get special attention. We also encourage others to innovate and become problem solvers for the wider society,” ended he. (imh/ros/wil)