Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Services in Learning Portal of Rumah Belajar
Center of Information and Communication Technology for Education, Ministry of Education and Culture

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
The main issue to be address in developing a professional sustainable development program for educators and educational staffs is the fact that the competence of more than 3 million educators and educational staffs in Indonesia cannot be increased in a short period of time. The training facilities owned by Ministry of Education and can only accommodate 100.000 participants each year. If we rely solely on those facilities, it would need 30 years to increase the competence of all educators and educational staffs in Indonesia. The competence improvement of educators and educational staffs, which include teachers, school principles, inspectors, school committee, head of office and agencies and other supporting personnel such as administration staffs is very important and obligatory if we desire the realization of education system that is qualified and valuable. To this day, there has been no sustainable education and training system for Indonesian educator and educational staffs. The geographical condition that varied greatly between different parts of Indonesia is another challenge. It raises problems such as disparities of human resources quality and infrastructures availability, differences in terms of overall characteristic in local government’s policies etc. The list of the problems is as follows: • Development disparities between provinces • The lack of competence instructors to handle such a large number of educator and educational staffs. • The lack of infrastructures • The lack of proper policies • Inability to provide suitable trainings for suitable educator and educational staffs • Local agencies send the same educator or educational staff all the time • The lack of qualified training materials • There is no special internet portal to accommodate the storage and access of learning materials. An initiative is needed to improve and balance the quality of education. It is needed to provide a service that can accommodate every type of social condition and every level and type of education. It needs to be easily replicated and customized. Professional Sustainable Development Program (PSDP) is a program that is designed to solve problems faced by all stakeholders of education in Indonesia. It is expected to simplify, accelerate, standardize and open access to better learning methods and materials. The online application for this program can handle 150.000 users in a single day. This capacity will allow the completion of 500.000 virtual trainings a year, assuming one training program takes up 4 months, which also means that within 6 years, all educators and educational staffs in Indonesia will have had at least one additional formal competence.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
Ministry of Education and Culture is responsible for developing and managing 51 million students, 3 million educators and educational staffs, 293.000 schools and 196 task units. This fact presents great challenges, especially in managing educators and educational staffs like teachers, lecturers and administration personnel. In its practice, the Professional Sustainable Development Program in Learning House portal can accommodate 500.000 individuals a year; a number that is resulted from the fact that trainers must no longer attend classes and the classroom itself is a virtual one. The number of participants and types of trainings is almost limitless. Since the trainers and training participants are no longer bound to physical space, a larger variety of figures; director of a national airliner, well-known motivators and entrepreneur or even a state minister, can fill in as trainer. This program can realize a synergy of education and business/professional world. It will create a possibility for the member of the public and educators and educational staffs to collaborate in developing lifelong learning community. It provides larger space for high quality learning materials such as videos, articles, and scientific journal to be utilized communally with the principles of Open Educational Resources.

 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
Professional Sustainable Development Program, which employs technological advancements, is not the first of its kind; many private educational institutions have done the same. The Ministry’s PSDP is unique in the aspects of: • Its bottom-up development: the program is developed by first analyzing the need of the users • Its user’s involvement in designing the final form of the program • It’s unified -thus coordinated- maintenance and security assurance by The Ministry’s Information and Communication Technology Center. This online training program integrates all types of training and development needs that include infrastructure; system security; assistance by education expert; learning materials; help desk; email client; 24/7 service; tutorial and video conference in a one-stop-service system. It is supported locally by The Ministry’s local task units and is provided free of charge. Any educational institution in Indonesia would only need to submit formal request to our Communication and Information Technology Center, and we will allow the an access to the PSD.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
The key factor in the development of Professional Sustainable Development Program in Learning House portal is the involvement of its users and stakeholders, from the its planning, development, socialization, human resources development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. In planning stage, the parties involved are the Ministry’s Information and Communication Technology Center and other agencies, Training Agencies of other ministries, local (provincial and city/regency) educational agencies and teacher’s community. It was developed further by the ICT Center with the identification of each unit’s needs and in this stage. It was identified that, among others, the units required flexibilities and accessibilities in modifying the features of the programs. In piloting stage, 38 Public Officials were given an online training for the first time. The training was a precondition for their new administrative position. The initial training took 3 months to complete with 12 subjects. When the same training was held soon after, 240 officials were accommodated; and this time the program integrates a comprehensive test - a feature that was not given in the initial training. This piloting program is still running at this moment. For the type of training that we held in piloting 1 and 2, its success were boosted by the fact that the competence given will increase the trainee’s ability for better job qualification. From the perspective of training administrators, PSDP gives room for cost efficiency because conventional training would cost an average of IDR4,000,000 for each participants. Accumulatively, the saving is very significant.

 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The stakeholders in PSDP the internal parties in the Ministry of Education and Culture, other ministries in Indonesia, local governments and private partners such as PT. Telkom, Microsoft and Intel. Those stakeholders have common interest in the program and can be identified as follows: • Educators and Educational Staffs can obtain easier access for competence development • Local governments are benefited from the availability of information regarding the qualification of educators and educational staffs in their region • Other ministries in Indonesia can utilize the existing system thus eliminating the need for their own investment • The program is a useful tool for private companies to expand the coverage of their existing CSRs.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
Funding for PSDP, as in the case of the Ministry’s Learning House can comes from: 1) National Annual Budget for the application’s design and planning; 2) National and Local Annual Budget as well as companies CSR funds for its socialization; 3) National and Local Annual Budget as well as companies CSR funds for the development of its human resources. The monitoring for its implementation has been integrated in local government’s annual programs.

 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
The outputs are: 1. Shortening the period of time needed to increase the competence of all educators and education staffs in Indonesia. 2. Facilitating every government units to develop their own human resource development scheme, through their active involvement in the design of the program 3. Providing a wider distribution of learning materials by allowing educators to contribute to the system and store the materials online 4. Increasing the overall qualification of Indonesia’s educators and educational staffs, which in the long term will eliminate the competence disparity and digital-divides of Indonesia’s education.

 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
Training participant’s database, which contains their portfolio, achievements, durations of usage, and feedbacks can be used to monitor and evaluate the execution of the trainings in PSDP. Managers and supervisors in the trainings can actively monitor the trainings by accessing this database. This program has certain management hierarchy with a manager who reports to the director of the training program and monitors the training real time. There is also a supervisor whose responsibility is to monitor instructor’s performance. The application itself has several tools for monitoring and evaluating the trainings.

 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
The main obstacle for the program is the limited Internet connection of the users. Not every one of the local agencies of Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture has a reliable Internet connection in their disposal. Efforts are being made to increase the capacity of the networks in those agencies. To open access for educators and educational staffs in remote areas, we modify the program so that it can be accessed through their respective local networks (intranets). In this modified system, learning materials are loaded to the nearest office. These offline materials are to be used in a localized training so it can still facilitate areas where direct connection to the program’s server is not possible. Synchronization of materials stored and distributed in these regional intranets with the ones in the main server is conducted periodically. For certain area with no access to electricity, the Ministry has procured generators and solar panels as well as computers and its network (using Vsat). Information and Communication Technologies Center has even sent its personnel to remote areas where assistance and direct handling is needed. Other challenge encountered by the program is the lack of awareness among decision makers in local governments. Public officers are rotated between positions too often in several areas and it hinders the continuity of the programs. In respond, our center frequently invites leaders from different localities to socialize the need for their active involvement in this program.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
This program is aimed at accelerating the improvement of educators and educational staff’s competence. A conventional method is calculated to take up to 30 years, and by optimizing the existing networks, we can cut it short to only 6 years. Changes are expected to take place by implementing this program consistently. Internally, the parties involved in this program are becoming more aware of certainty in providing their services. Physical hindrance -limited number of classrooms and instructors- was often blamed for our inability to provide trainings requested by the users. Since virtual classes are fundamentally limitless, we can provide service assurance without worrying that we’re making a promise that we can’t keep. By having more varied trainers –as the result of the program’s flexibility, transfer of knowledge is coming from a wider range of resources. From their contact with the outside world, it is expected that teachers for example, would develop new ways of delivering learning materials. Administration personnel are expected to develop better and innovative ways of serving the public. Necessary changes in education methods and philosophies can be easily done because educators and educational staffs are trained more frequently. The improvement on the qualifications and competence of educators and educational staffs can be seen trough various tests and direct observations. The increasing quality of graduates is also an important tool in determining PSDP’s positive impact towards the development educators and educational staffs. The Ministry invested a large sum of money on this program. Since it is just the second year of its implementation, more funds will be needed to allow changes and modifications to take place. PSDP is as a sound investment when we consider its wide coverage and usefulness and the fact that it can be utilized by other government agencies outside The Ministry of Education and Culture. We envisioned that PSDP would turn into a one-stop solution for human resource development in various government agencies. It is a possibility because the enthusiasm is present, as in the case of The Ministry of Religious Affairs. While it is a shame that some parties pointed out that SPDP eliminates chances for training participants to travel and enjoy some free time while attending conventional classes in provincial capital or even Java’s big cities, we believe that this nonsensical comment will be discouraged when they realize that the benefits are way greater. A Minister’s regulation that will put hours of online training in equal footing with conventional classes is being processed at the moment. Last but not least, PSDP will reduce our educators and educational staff’s reliance on imported learning materials. The presence of so many literature and learning modules online, and the fact that it is stored in an easily accessed medium will dramatically increase its functionality. Local materials were previously considered inferior for its lack of comprehensiveness. A collection of materials, in the other hand, will have its quality increased several folds, especially if it is continuously updated. Independence from imported materials will mean less spending in purchasing them.

 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Its legal status as a product of Minister of Education and Culture’s Regulation No.99 2013 would ensure PSDP’s continuance. But that is one aspect of it. Seeing it from the involvement of internal and external parties should become another guarantee. For them SPDP should become an investment of effort, to say the least. This “sense-of-belonging” effect would also present in its users. Educators and educational staffs across the nation do realize that they need the program. As a community, they would actively involve in maintaining PSDP’s existence. The service concept for PSDP is to give administrators certain level of independence to develop their own training. This level of liberty allows room for creativity and most of all, sense of belonging. Figuratively speaking, PSDP is a building and training administrators are the tenants who are allowed to fill each rooms in the building with their own furniture. Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture designs SPDP to be easily replicated. Potential training administrators are only required to submit an application form, and once approved, they can start a meeting to specify the details of the training. Our web operator will create new space in Learning House Portal for the new training. Information and Communication Technology Center will assist the training administrator in its set-up, although practically a staff that is skilled in basic computer will be able to follow the online guidelines and set it up for themselves. Fundamentally, any training administrator could replicate the program through 6 simple steps: a. Opening a training program account in Learning House portal, which is as simple as submitting online registration form b. Developing curriculum and syllabus, or copying the existing ones. c. Developing training materials and modules d. Uploading training schemes to its respective training program e. Handling the training program f. Monitoring and supervising the operation of the training

 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
Professional Sustainable Development Program was initially a side project that has little support from within the Ministry itself. As stakeholders give their positive responds, we soon realize that in its correlation with the Ministry’s Information and Communication Technology Center’s role, PSDP should be given a much better attention. Further interaction and discussion with the stakeholders motivates the Center even more. With their involvement, we successfully form a set of training needs and requirements, comparison with existing programs of its type, and incorporate it into our new program. We did learned, as others should also learn, that; in order to create a fully functional and expandable program, ideas and contributions from outside parties are the utmost important. The involvement of those stakeholders from the early stage of the program has also resulted in a beneficial effect: Professional Sustainable Development Program has become a pride of the nation. Parties involved, to some extend realize that as a nation, Indonesia is capable of designing a network-based training of which utility can be felt by all. With this kind of optimism, challenges in education should be overcome more easily. To a broader extend, PSDP is expected to become a trigger for more collaboration between different parties in developing the nation as a whole; especially to face the challenge of the increasingly borderless world.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Center of Information and Communication Technology for Education, Ministry of Education and Culture
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Sri Hargyanto Suryoprayudo
Title:   Ir., Post Grad, Dr (Bs Civil Eng., Post Grad in Pr  
Telephone/ Fax:   +62 021 7418808 ext. 3039, Fax: +62 021 7401727
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   srihargyanto.suryoprayudo@kemdikbud.go.id  
Address:   Jl. R.E. Martadinata Km. 15,5 Ciputat – South Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia
Postal Code:   15411
City:   south tangerang
State/Province:   Banten
Country:  

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