Educational technology's place in Indonesia

Educational technology's place in Indonesia

By Nirwan Idrus

JAKARTA (JP): Much has been said about higher education in
Indonesia in the recent past. The new paradigm the government is
seeking to implement has concentrated on the mechanisms of
changing attitudes and processes. Autonomy, accountability,
equity of access and quality have been proposed as aims in the
backbone of that new paradigm. Several ongoing loan projects
exist at present to help institutions as well as the Ministry of
Education and Culture achieve these. It is accepted that it is
not easy to achieve such a brave new world considering the
limited resources, and an environment which is not conducive
anyway.

However, it is inevitable that given the geography
and relatively huge number of higher education students in the
country, that an unique approach to higher education in Indonesia
is needed.

Rapidly approaching globalization, a free-trade era and
increasing international competitiveness, is likely to add to the
interesting mix of challenges that Indonesia is and will be
facing in the next few decades.

The question is whether the traditional approaches to higher
education are still acceptable in such a situation, and if they
are not, then what other approaches should be used? As I have
stated in a number of previous articles in this paper, Indonesia
is at a crossroads. Shape up very quickly and smartly or face
oblivion. This may sound somewhat harsh, but the situation is
more than just critical. We have very little choice and the world
out there is rapidly becoming more than just harsh. There is
going to be a new law of the jungle out there. Not of the brute
force kind, but the brain force kind. This typifies the next
century's approach to power.

Forget about becoming a nation to be reckoned with if what you
have is simply numbers. A country must have the brainpower, the
knowledge plus the ability to harness this knowledge if it wants
both recognition as a leading country in the world, and to
compete on a level playing field with other countries around the
world. Undoubtedly we need many knowledgeable people, that is,
people with brainpower -- although not forgetting those who will
need to do the jobs, many of which are still manual or
semimanual.

But how do we produce these people quickly, and with a quality
that can be sustained? We already know that the traditional
method is full of holes. Problems galore, from the salary of
teachers and lecturers to attitudes, to quality of teaching and
learning to alleged massive absenteeism in many state higher
education institutions that left students fending for themselves.

As stated earlier, the system needs a complete overhaul. The
biggest hurdle is the helplessness that abounds, both at the
government level and at the higher education institutional level.
The vicious circle is so complete that no one appears game enough
to even stretch their big toe outside the circle. Many hide
behind government regulations (PP), ministerial decisions (SK
Mendikbud), presidential decrees (Keppres), laws (UU) to name a
few, while others even quote Indonesian/Asian values as a reason
for not changing.

As recently as a few weeks ago in an education article, the
weekly magazine Gamma (March 28, 1999) quoted the then director
general of higher education Prof. Bambang Suhendro on this issue.
In his opinion, the University of Bina Nusantara (a private
university in Jakarta) overstepped its mandate in running
courses through the Internet and using multimedia as a teaching
aid, because the law only allowed Universitas Terbuka (Open
University) to run distance education type courses.

University of Bina Nusantara is still the first Indonesian
university to achieve international recognition for the quality
of its courses, having been granted a ISO 9001 quality standard
certification. Its attempt at delivering its course through the
Internet and using multimedia is obviously in line with its
student-centered learning (or customer-orientation) approach. It
is also certainly in line with universities and higher education
institutions worldwide. We should really applaud Bina Nusantara
for its attempt at bringing Indonesia into the 21st century if
not the 20th.

The use of new advanced and educational technologies is
without doubt one of the surest ways to achieve the new paradigm
alluded to earlier. We should try to use these as solutions to
our problems to produce as many educated people as possible in
the shortest possible time. Simultaneously, these technologies
are allowing the devolution to and empowerment of the people or
in this case students, through which the new Indonesia will prop
herself up onto the level playing field of the knowledge society.

Should anybody then stop us in this quest? It would appear
that only those who do not wish to see Indonesian progress
forward and upward, will stop this blessed and even holy
endeavor. Only those who are blind to the extremely rapid
development elsewhere in the world would stop this progress.
Certainly, one would have thought that nobody in the education
sphere would do such a thing.

Considering Indonesia's geographical spread, varying levels of
education and access to education throughout the archipelago, and
the need for a more standardized upgrading of education from
Sabang to Merauke, the use of technology and in particular
educational technology is simply unavoidable. But what are we
talking about when we say technology or educational technology?

With the rapid development of technology itself, it is
challenging to give a firm definition of educational technology.
In essence it is the use of new methods of learning that improve
effectiveness and efficiency of learning for students, while also
allowing students to decide for themselves about how, where, when
and what they learn. This is another manifestation of democracy
that Indonesia has been longing for, for such a long time.

In real terms, both new software (human resources) and
hardware are involved. A very simple example is the use of an
overhead transparency projector in a classroom, rather than the
ubiquitous blackboard. This improves student learning because the
material shown on the transparency can be easily photocopied and
distributed to the students, in comparison to students
laboriously copying material from a blackboard.

Then there is the use of 8mm or 16mm films to supplement
classroom lectures. Even this technology has been further refined
and modernized. Videotapes are more portable, easier to use and
relatively cheaper to edit and revise.

Then, of course, there is the computer which has
revolutionized much of our everyday life. The floppy diskette has
graduated from the 5 1/4 inch physically less durable diskette to
a now universal 3 1/2 inch 1.4Mb memory space and certainly more
robust diskette. This has eased a lot of information (and
knowledge) transfer. Lately we have seen the "zip" drive disk
which can contain a lot more memory than the 3 1/2 inch diskette,
which in itself is almost the size of the computer memory of just
a few years ago. A typical zip drive disk has 100 Mb memory size
-- some 50 times that of a very good laptop computer of just a
few years ago.

Then of course, there is the Internet and the World Wide Web
which has opened all sorts of possibilities in all fields of
endeavor, including education. Communication between two people
or many hundreds of people at the same time has become cheaper
and certainly quicker than any other previous modes of
communication transfer, and can be personalized with ease. This
of course has been made possible by the invention of Alexander
Graham Bell, the telephone. It is through this medium that all
these electrons carrying various messages flow. They are then
catapulted off the Earth to another invention, the satellite,
which can beam many millions of bytes of information across the
world. There is no reason why education cannot take advantage of
these new technologies.

The major obstacle is the willingness and ability of humans to
use and uncover many more roles for this technology in and for
education. The limiting factors are ourselves including, as
discussed previously, the various manmade hurdles including,
among other things, the law and government rules which hamstring
progress.

It is true that the populace has to be protected from the
unscrupulous. But surely not from something that has been shown
many times to help the progress of humankind. The use of
Educational Technology in countries like Indonesia where the
window to catch up with the rest of the world, particularly in
educating their people, is rapidly getting smaller, is an
inevitable priority.

International loans and aid agencies must also take this into
consideration when deciding how to prioritize for Indonesia, in
addition to the other revolutionary changes to the education
system I recommended in previous articles.

Yes, there is a very important place for educational
technology in Indonesia, and the quicker we use it pervasively,
the sooner Indonesia will join the globalized world.

The writer is an international higher education consultant
living in Jakarta. This is a personal opinion only.