Alhamdulillah, a day before the General Election for Members of Parliament 2009, I had a chance to visit Universitas Negeri Malang (UM). It was my first visit to Malang, a small and peaceful city in East Jawa. Since there were only few flights that go directly to Malang, and none of them can accommodate my schedule, I had to go to Surabaya first and ride a cab for more than 2 hours. The ride also allowed me to see the wall of the Mud-Lake of Porong Sidoarjo.
I met with the Dean of the Faculty of Education and the Dean of the Faculty of Literature, in addition to meeting with Head of Bahasa Indonesia Department, and some other lecturers, who kindly not only discussed a lot of interesting things, but also guided me and my colleague to tour the campus and the city. Thanks to Pak Gatut and Pak Wahyudi.
I had an interesting discussion with Prof. Hendyat Soetopo, the Dean of the Faculty of Education, who also generously presented me with his own book (Belajar dan pembelajaran). There were two issues that we discussed the curriculum of the Faculty and general observation on our education system.
I learned how the Faculty of Educational Sciences UM*) develops its own curriculum and the difficulties it faces when trying to change the curriculum.
The critical point of the curriculum development that the Dean shared was simplicity, concerning the number of credits as well as the number of the subjects. This means that the Faculty as well as departments within the Faculty try to maintain the number of credit as low as the regulation permits. The regulation from the Ministry of Education says that all S1 (bachelor) degree should offer between 144 - 160 credits within 4 years. So, most of the departments offer 144 credits to their students for the course of 4 years.
Additionally, within the required credits, the departments offer 3 and 4 credits courses, instead of 2. Only a few subjects offered as 2 credit subjects. As a result, the number of subjects are lower than it used to. One of the keys for that is merging two or three closely-related subjects into a single subject.
There were, without doubt, tensions between departments and among professors when the curriculum has to be changed. Change, as always, is not easily taken and implemented.
(to be continued...)
Note:
*) I was told that the acronym of Universitas Negeri Malang is UM, instead of UNM. The reason for that was because the dispute between IKIP Malang and IKIP makasar. Universitas Negeri Malang was formaerly known as IKIP (Teacher Tarining Institute of) Malang. When all IKIPs transformed to become universities, there changed their names that indicate both the area where they exist and state-funding status. Therefore, IKIP Jakarta, for instance is changed to UNJ (Universitas Negeri Jakarta). However, tehere are two institutions that can be called UNM: Malang and Makasar. At the end, Makasar uses the UNM, while Malang known as UM.
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Kamis, April 09, 2009
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