The COVID-19 pandemic, referred to the global pandemic, has had a tremendous impact on all aspect of the people’s lives in the world. People are required to be able to adapt, be creative and innovative in facing all possible impacts of the current pandemic. Therefore, WUACD on webinars (WOW) aims to present the thread and opportunity of the global pandemic in contributing to help society get out of their downturn in community development. The webinar was held on Wednesday, October 18, 2020.

The theme of the webinar is “Higher Education’s Development Strategy in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic”. The speakers of the webinar were Prof. Bambang Brodjonegoro, Ph.D. (Indonesia Minister of Research and Technology), Prof. Dr. Bambang Sektiari Lukiswanto (Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia), Prof. Yu Chen (Wuhan University, China), Prof. Ken Osaka (Tohoku University, Japan), Dr. Dhany Saputra (Centre for Genomic Epidemiology, Denmark) Assoc. Prof. Syed Mizanur Rahman (Daffodil International University, Bangladesh), Dr. Mohd Roslan Bin Rosnon (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia), Dr. Michael Lenaghan (Miami Dade College, USA), Dr. Neriman Hocaoglu Bahadir (Kirklareli University, Turkey), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rohana Jani (University of Malaya, Malaysia), Dr. Jenho-Peter Ou (Asia University, Taiwan).

The speech of the Rector of Universitas Airlangga, Prof. Dr. Moh. Nasih, marked the opening of the webinar. He delivered the innovation of Universitas Airlangga in facing the global pandemic and invited other WUACD members to enhance community development activities during the pandemic. The discussion continued to Prof Dr. Bambang Sektiari Lukiswanto who explained Universitas Airlangga’s contribution in helping the community through several fruitful programs. Then. Prof. Bambang Brodjonegoro presented the innovation of higher education in vaccine acceleration.

The discussion then continued to the explanation from Prof. Yu Chen which describing the virus outbreak in China. After that, the participants were grouped into several plenary rooms. Room A discussed about health issue, which covered virus transmission, outbreak, and bioinformatics technology, with Prof. Ken Osaka and Dr. Dhany Saputra. In room B there were Assoc. Prof. Syed Mizanur Rahman and Dr. Mohd Roslan Bin Rosnon who discussed education issue on empathy in online teaching-learning and service-learning activity. Room C discussed the social issue which was led by Dr. Michael Lenaghan and Dr. Neriman Hocaoglu Bahadir, their discussion covered democracy’s college and Europe’s crisis in response to COVID-19. While in room D, the economic issue was discussed with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rohana Jani and Dr. Jenho-Peter Ou, which covered the economic impact of Covid-19 and community services on a deaf community in Malaysia.

For those of you who are interested to see the recorded meeting, kindly visit our YouTube “WUACD Universitas Airlangga.”