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Indonesia's Merdeka Belajar Policy and its challenges to classroom and textbook

Rosyadi Alfiana Amrin & Hanani Iva
Gadjah Mada University

1. Background

Universitas Gadjah Mada is the oldest national university in Indonesia which established the first Korean language program. In 2003, it established a Korean language degree for vocational school and continued to broaden the Korean language education by opening a Korean language undergraduate program in 2007. We have changed our curriculums and textbooks to update and match the needs of current conditions. Since 2020, Indonesian minister of education and culture, Nadiem Makarim has launched a new curriculum policy called Merdeka Belajar (Independent learning) and Kampus merdeka (independent university) that are shortened as MBKM. The new curriculum was proposed for improving the graduates competences, in terms of soft skills or hard skills which it needs to be relevant and ready to compete in the job market. Flexible experiential learning programs are expected to facilitate students to develop their potential according to their passions and talents (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2020). In MBKM, students have a right to study 3 semesters outside their major or study program. Those 3 semesters are divided into 1 semester of taking courses outside their major or study program and 2 semesters doing learning activity, such as internship, community services, teaching at school, student exchange, research, entrepreneurship, independent study and humanitarian program.

In practice, universities have an obligation to facilitate students to be able to take credits outside the university where she/he is enrolled for a maximum of 2 semesters or equivalent to 40 credits and take credits in different study programs at the same university for 1 semester or equivalent to 20 credits. Thus, there are a total of 60 credits that must be spared to facilitate this mbkm program. Therefore, each study program must modify their courses by adding or dropping some courses.

Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) has started using this curriculum since 2021. One of the differences from the previous curriculum is showing graduate profiles. Graduate profiles contain jobs for the graduates based on tracer studies results. Tracer studies is a survey conducted by UGM for analyzing the job of alumni Therefore, courses that boost skills and knowledge are required.

Meanwhile, the Korean language and culture program has courses which stress the two semesters for strengthening students skills in Korean. The following semesters, the students have to enroll both in Korean classes and required courses of linguistics and literature. And in order to graduate, students have to write the thesis based on topics that are related to linguistics or literature. Hence, in order to adjust with the MBKM curriculum, there are several challenges that we have to consider both inside the classrooms and textbooks.

2. Comparison MBKM with previous curriculum

  2017 MBKM
Graduate profile Not Included Included
Total credits 89 credits for mandatory courses and 16 credits for elective courses 80 credits for mandatory courses dan 43 credits for elective courses
Elective Courses Students are allowed to take courses from other department or study program within Universitas Gadjah Mada Students are allowed to take courses from other department or study program, faculty within or outside Universitas Gadjah Mada
Language Skill Courses Korean Grammar, Reading Comprehension, Writing, Speaking course 1 to 4 Grammar 1-4
Reading and Writing 1-2
Reading 3-4
Writing 3-4
Listening and Speaking 1-4
*The courses were set up based on the textbook that is being used and due to the need to cut down on the total credits to adapt to the MBKM
Other Courses Translation 1-2 Translation 1-2
Interpretation
3 courses, such as History of Korea, Hanja and Korean Academic Writing from 2017 curriculum were dropped

From the table above, it shows how the MBKM curriculum has changed the way courses should be arranged. Courses of a program studies are listed based on program learning outcomes and bring the values of vision and mission of program studies. In ministry guidelines, in order to define a program learning outcomes, program studies needs to make sure whether it has been based on attitude and general skills according to National Standard of Higher Education (SN-DIKTI), special skill and knowledge according to KKNI (Indonesian National Qualification Framework), graduates profiles, need of stakeholder or job market, and ensure how to evaluate the outcomes. One example of our program studies's learning outcome is the students are able to translate and interpret correctly and properly various communication both in Korean to Indonesian and vice versa.

3. Challenges inside classroom

The new policy emphasizes student independence inside and outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, the lecturers implement a student based outcome which does not only focus on student centered learning but also the outcome after the learning process. In each meeting, the lecturers are supposed to have a study case. Thus, it will foster discussion and develop student's critical thinking. It sounds like an improvement but in language learning classes, where every subject depends on the learner's language level, it needs adjustment to implement this outcome based learning. For Korean linguistic theories, Korean language skills or Korean advanced level courses, the new approach gives students many chances to develop not only their language skills but also team works, creativity, time management and many soft skills.

However, it seems that not all courses are easily adapted to this learning approach. For basic grammar classes, the lecturers can not just apply the traditional classrooms or use the teacher centered learning like the grammar translation method, ALM 'army' method, and etc. Using blended learning or flipped classroom methods, the lecture has to arrange the fourteen meetings to be full of student group discussions. In reality, there are many challenges for the outcome based classroom, for example, when students were asked some questions related to the pre-class videos or learning materials, they just remained quiet. Even if the lecture called their names, there were not many students who spoke out their opinions. Thus, the student centered method such as PPP (present, practice, produce) method, task or project based learning method need to be implemented together with improvement of the students mindset and motivation. The mindset of students who still think that the grammar classroom is where the lecture only gives explanations has to be changed.

Another challenge in the classroom, all students have to complete in short times for their requirement credits up to 84 based on MBKM's guideline. If we fully implement the MBKM, we have to finish all Korean related courses in four semesters. By this, the students are required to at least learn all intermediate books and attend all Korean linguistics and literature theories. After the fourth semester, they are allowed to get 60 credits for MBKM. There are several types of activities that students can be granted instead of taking Korean related courses in program studies. According to the ministry of education and culture guidelines (2020), program studies need to facilitate students to get 60 credits from exchange students program, internship, serving as a teacher in a school, research, humanities projects, independent study, community service program and entrepreneur program. The advantage of this granted credits, students do not require to take all courses in their home based program studies. They can choose more than 8 activities to complete 144 credits. Internship for a semester can be granted 20 credits. For Korean language majors, credits grant policy for exchange student programs and internships will give them real Korean related work experience before graduation. But to make this available, a program studies has to broaden their connection with Korean Universities for exchange student opportunities and also sign the MoU with a startup or established company which is related to the program studies for internship.

The students also can apply for MBKM programs from our ministry of education and culture. Their programs give students chances to apply for 8 activities under the ministry's support such as Indonesia International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA) and Kampus Mengajar (teacher program for schools). There are no limitations or restrictions for students to apply for any campus as long they are qualified for the program. Thus, two of our students were accepted in two universities in Europe and one student was accepted in a university in Korea. But there are some students from other majors under the faculty of humanities who were accepted to Korean universities because they have better English skills than our students. Also, in the future, the students can apply for internships or other activities under the ministry program. It makes us worry because there is a chance they do not practice their Korean language if they take non-Korean related programs. Even if the ministry of education and culture allow the student to not write a thesis for the graduation's requirement, our program studies still obliges students to present their research by writing a thesis.

In order to adjust with the MBKM requirement, our program study is also ready to teach Korean language to non degree students. Our faculty already made the course as the required course for non degree students to take at least one semester. The purpose of this course is that students from other program studies also can learn other foreign languages besides English. For example, a Japanese majored student can apply for the Korean language for a non degree course. The problem here is always the number of students which always increases every year. Then it will be difficult to adjust to MBKM requirements to give them a student centered class.

4. Challenges for textbooks

It has been difficult to match Korean language skills textbooks to our curriculum. We used to teach "Integrated Korean Language for Indonesian" books to our students for about 9 years as a main textbook. This book was published by the Korean foundation and co written by Indonesian lecturers who are experts in Korean languages. At that time, this book accommodated our program studies needs and curriculum. But as time went by, the book was deemed less able to accommodate the needs. There were some reasons such as the lack of grammar. There are no activities for practicing grammar. Many translation errors in vocabulary and grammar explanation. The activities for speaking, reading, writing and listening are not integrated to each other. By considering these factors and also the fact that the majority of Korean majors nowadays speak basic Korean before university, in 2019, it has been decided to change the textbook to Seoul National University Korean language books. The book focuses more on grammar and speaking. For reading and writing, the lecture has to use other materials to support the learning's objects. Since we changed this textbook, some courses for basic Korean have been combined into one course. For instance, in the first and second semester, there are reading and writing and listening and speaking. This change is also inline for our purpose to reduce our curriculum required credits from 89 to 80 to adjust with the MBKM curriculum.

Since we use the Korean language textbook from the Korean Education Institute, the Korean language topics in each chapter are still general. The students have to learn various humanities and cultures topics in Korean outside the textbook. The textbook for Korean major students and language education students shall be different. Because Korean major students will be required to have skill in academic and business and other special purpose Korean. The current main textbook also does not cover translation and interpretation courses, Korean business courses and Korean teaching as foreign language course. Unlike Korean major students, students from other program studies who have to take Korean courses also need a basic textbook that contains more interesting activities to maintain their motivation to study Korean. Several Korean language institute textbooks have been used for these classes but it turned out to be difficult to accomplish for fourteen to fifteen meetings and majority students who take the program only for credits will find it hard to keep up with the class.

5. Conclusion

To find out the needs of Korean related education in universities in Indonesia, it requires an understanding of the MBKM curriculum. MBKM curriculum has considered many problems of previous curriculum such as lack of skill for working, lecture centered learning, and lack of chances to get internship or exchange student experience. However, the program studies have to rapidly adapt and find solutions to problems during the implementations. For instance, even though Korean language learning is required to teach the language skills for its core but in higher education such as a university, the learning has to be relevant and matched to the current curriculum. The program studies even have to drop some credits and facilitate students to gain credits outside their program studies or university and from outside classroom activities such as exchange programs, internships and etc in order to score points during evaluation and accreditation.

[Reference]

- Ministry of Education and Culture. 2020. Merdeka Belajar-Kampus Merdeka Guideline. Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi Kemdikbud RI.
- Kurikulum 2017 Program Studi Bahasa dan Kebudayaan Korea, edisi revisi 2020.
- Kurikulum MBKM Program Studi Bahasa dan Kebudayaan Korea, 2021.

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