BUILDING COMPETENCY BASED LEARNING MODEL FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION IN POST COVID19 ERA: A CASE STUDY IN UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA

Abstract

This paper presents the efforts made by a Team at Universitas Terbuka (UT) to provide optimal learning support services to students piloted on Management Information Systems (MIS) course offered in the Economics Education study program. Students in the open and distance education (ODE) system are required to implement self-directed learning. At the same time, ODE institutions are required to provide facilities needed by the students, one of which is providing learning support services for students. As an ODE institution, UT provides various forms of learning support services to students, including tutorial. Basically, there are two types of tutorials, face-to-face and online. During the COVID 19 Pandemic, due to limitation of physical contact, UT provided webinar tutorial to replace face-to-face tutorial. Tutorials online (tuton) are conducted asynchronously in a period of 8 consecutive weeks of each semester. The materials on tuton are basically an additional explanation of the materials discussed in the modules, topics for discussions, and assignments. Students are expected to log in to the tuton at least once a week to learn the material, participate in discussion, and on certain weeks work on and upload assignment. To provide optimal learning support services, synchronous discussions and augmented reality (AR) programs were added on tuton of MIS course in second semester of 2021 and first semester of 2022. The synchronous meetings provided opportunities for students to discuss topics with tutors and specially invited speakers. The AR programs were added to enrich students’ learning experiences. However, students’ response to these facilities have not been encouraging yet. Not many students were logged in in the discussions and AR programs have not attracted many discussions. Nevertheless, based on inputs from students, improvements were made to assemble this form of learning support service in order to improve quality of student learning support services.