TIMES AUSTRALIA, JAKARTA – Bizword, an educational game made by students of State Polytechnic of Malang (Polinema) won second place in the National Education Competition 2024. The competition took place on May 12-13, 2024 and was located at UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.

The Bizword team consisted of Fadhilah Putri Aprilia Maharani as Team Leader, Imam Islamudin, Eva Septian Nursetiya Putri, and Hawwa Aulia Nur.

"Our team brought our innovative product "Bizword Board Game" which is a game designed to sharpen English skills in a business context," Hawwa Aulia Nur, one of the Bizword Team said.

Aulia explained that Bizword Board Game is a simulation game in two-dimensional form that takes the sample of Jakarta City as a game map. In this game, there are skyscrapers and there are names too. This game can be played by up to five players simultaneously and each player gets five pawns that will be moved using dice.

"This game is similar to a monopoly game where players can move through buildings on the map," she explained.

When players arrive at a building, they must negotiate with their opponents using English. This process involves drawing cards from a pile, where each card contains a basic vocabulary. Thus, the negotiation process with the opponent will use the prefix word from the card.

Besides winning 2nd place in the Business Plan category, the Bizword Team also won the Best Presentation Business Plan and Gold Medal for Business Plan Education.

"Our motivation as a team is to achieve as much as possible during college and gain unforgettable experiences," she explained enthusiastically.

The preparations made by the team include filing, registering for the competition, preparing business plan proposals, making game prototypes, and preparing materials for presentations. On the other hand, the role of the supervisor is no less important to guide during the competition from start to finish such as undergoing the bureaucracy of applying for funds from the campus.

The Bizword team had a special strategy in facing tough tests during the competition. "We worked hard and complement each other by dividing the jobdesk equally, such as making papers, some take care of editing, and some handle prototype production," she explained. Solid cooperation among team members is the key to their success.

Their best moment was when they qualified for the finals, because at that time, they were hesitant to compete with participants from big campuses such as Brawijaya University, Airlangga University and University of Indonesia.

After the success they had from this competition, the team hopes to continue working again and make more achievements. She also added that by participating in this competition, the State Polytechnic of Malang (Polinema) campus proved that it could compete at the national and international levels. (*)