THE NEEDS OF COLLABORATION IN OPERATING AN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING INSTITUTION: UT CASE
ABSTRACT: This article
discusses the importance of building collaboration among agencies in managing student
support service for the distance student in Universitas Terbuka/UT (Indonesia
Open University/IOU). As a mass-scale university with the number of students
more than 600 thousand scattered in 37 provinces in Indonesia and overseas,
heterogeneous socio-cultural background, offering more than 200 study program,
and semester test held simultaneously, UT should be able to recruit thousands
of tutors, invigilator, and executive personnel to conduct academic activities
in those region. UT should manage course development team (curriculum
developers, modules developers, content experts, media specialists, and art designers,
linguists, and also graphics developers). UT should also provide classrooms for
academic activities, lab and computer to facilitate student support service.
This condition implies that the availability of human resources and
infrastructure, including a computer lab connected to the internet in each unit
of study is a necessity. Therefore, in order to improve the quality of distance
learning and to accelerate change of learning style from traditional-based to
e-learning-based, collaboration between UT with local agencies is a must to ensure
the availability of human resources and e-learning facilities.
Author: Herman
Journal Code: jppendidikangg130060
