THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA’S ONLINE TUTORIALS TO HELP EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION STUDENT TEACHERS LEARNING DURING THE PANDEMIC COVID 19

Abstract

This paper explains how the provision of online tutorial in Universitas Terbuka (UT) can help UT’s students such as the Early Childhood Education (ECE) student teachers learning at UT. During the pandemic Covid 19, students cannot meet face to face with their tutors since it is dangerous. Therefore, the provision of UT’s online tutorials which can give a chance for the students to have the asynchronous learnings with their tutors or instructors can be considered very important. In this paper, it is explored how the ECE student teachers can still meet and learn by participating in online tutorials. UT’s online tutorials have been planned carefully in order to help all UT students including the ECE student teachers to learn actively. Therefore, without meeting with the tutors directly, the ECE student teachers can still learn by reading the learning materials, participating in the discussion sections and answering the assignments.
Even, ECE student teachers can also interact indirectly with their online tutors and their fellow students using the chat room or by sending emails or by using whatsap (WA). By joining and participating in the online UT tutorials, students are directed to better understand the subject matter of their printed modules and also the students are instructed to be online learners. This article is the result of research conducted by researchers to investigate how the opinion of UT’s ECE student teachers about the online tutorials they joined, and how the online tutorials can help them learn. In addition, in this study, the researcher tries to explore how participating in online tutorials can help UT’s ECE student teachers become more active in their learning. The research method for this study used a simple quantitative-qualitative descriptive approach using a questionnaire which sent online. The results of this study are 1. Participating in online tutorials turns out to be the right way to help students learn without attending the tutorial venues, 2. Participating in online tutorials helps UT’s ECE student teachers to be more active in their learning and 3. By studying online, students learn to familiarize themselves with computers and the internet.