Daryono, head of UT’s Research and Innovation Center of Open and Distance Education (PRI-PTJJ) and the Community Service and Development Institution (LPPM), told reporters in Jakarta that UT’s ongoing collaboration with partners, included Erasmus+ from the European Union, open universities from several ASEAN countries and Onno Widodo Purbo, IT writer and activist for internet access, also deputy rector of South Tangerang Institute of Technology (ITTS).

Citing an example of collaborative projects underway, he mentioned UTAkses carried out in collaboration with Internet Offline with Erasmus+. UTAkses started three years ago aiming to overcome a problem facing students unable to access UT Online due to poor internet connections, such as in internet blank spots.

Technically, UTAkses provides local offline internet servers designs for wireless network systems functioning to serve the student learning process and support offline internet network operations within a radius of 3 kilometers.

“We build a device like a small base transmission system [BTS] in blank spots to allow students to access UT Online. The project will be completed this year,” said Daryono in a press conference following a workshop held in hybrid style on May 7, at UT’s Wisma II in South Tangerang.

He said that as a legal entity, UT should also focus on gaining international recognition as expected by the Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry.

The workshop themed “Advancing Research and Teaching Partnership and Collaboration in Open and Distance Education” was part of the Enhancing Quality Education for International University Recognition (EQUITY) program, or Program Dana Abadi Perguruan Tinggi (DAPT), funded by Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP).

The workshop featured Metta Alsobrook, the Director of Institutional Research and Assessment at the University of the People who discussed “E-learning in the US: Lesson Learned and Best Practices. Other speakers were Tian Belawati from UT and Onno of the South Tangerang Institute of Technology, who presented a paper titled, “Innovations in Open and Distance Education”.

Daryono also revealed that UT would increase its ongoing collaboration regarding courses with open universities in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

According to him, UT’s eagerness to collaborate with ASEAN countries dated back in 2012 when UNESCO was highly concerned about the high number of young people was unable to pursue higher education, which led to open universities in ASEAN coming to terms with the massive open online course (MOOC) collaboration movement.

“We will also explore the possibility of collaborating with Ibu Metta and Pak Onno. That’s why they were invited to share their insights and experience in the workshop. The workshop also provides a platform for UT teaching staff to gain knowledge about online or distance education and boost their capacity as researchers,” he said.

Artificial intelligence in education

Meanwhile, Alsobrook, who spoke on behalf of herself as a specialist in distance educational issues, revealed tight regulation regarding students participating in distance education by enforcing student identification verification.

Indonesia-born Alsobrook said that student identification verification was part of efforts to curtail cheating, plagiarism and all forms of academic dishonesty, as well as to protect students who act honorably.

According to her, distance learning is a complex entity and the definition must be clear, and it is not just “moving” from face to face to the online environment. “The main goal should be student success. Use data to inform decisions and help students to the finish line,” she explained with regard to the lessons learned from distance education in the US.

It is also of paramount importance to have clear expectations and clear design. “Regular and substantive interactions are a must,” she said, adding that another lesson learned was that live sessions could increase student engagement and enthusiasm for the course.

Alsobrook said the inevitable rapid development of technology, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), has brought benefits to distance higher education but also poses a challenge.

According to her, AI can be used to support the more “menial” tasks of assessment, opening time and space for more engagement with activities such as reviewing and interpreting data, sense-making on results and conversations on what to change or to improve. “For example, AI can aid in developing materials faculty and staff can react to, or use to brainstorm, such as drafts of learning outcomes, rubrics, survey questions, program report templates, etc.,” she said.

AI in online education is a valuable tool to accomplish routine assessment tasks, but “there is a need to preserve the human element that ensures quality and accountability,” she said.

“Our challenge is that AI is used for cheating. In a lot of cases students use AI to do assignments.”

Daryono said that UT had harnessed the potential of AI by referring to UNESCO’s guidance for AI. “AI assists us in providing immediate online comments for our students,” he said, adding that an estimated 10,000 classes with 550,000 students were spread across Indonesia.

Tian Belawati, who discussed “Democratization of Higher Education Through Open and Distance Education” underscored the importance of realizing UT’s vision of providing Indonesians with equal access to higher education.

She said distance higher education was key to solving the problems faced by an estimated 27 million Indonesian people who do not have access to higher education. “Education is a key to transforming people to overcome poverty and achieve prosperity,” she said.

She called on UT staff to have a conviction that online education can help promote equal access to education. “Enabling every individual regardless of their ethnic group, cultural background or religion to have access to education is the primary goal,” said the former rector. 

“So, our challenge is how to provide, as widely as possible, quality higher education,” she said.

The rapid technology development also poses another challenge given that UT students are highly diversified in terms of technology acquisition, from tech savvy to tech illiterate people.

“In this context, our challenge is how to provide the best education services to students with different technological capabilities for the next 10 years or more because we want to reach out to people living in remote regions. 

Responding to a question on distance education for disabled people, especially visually impaired learners, Tian said that UT had translated the learning modules into voice to enable the visually impaired learners to join UT Online. “Now with the diversified sophisticated technology, especially software, providing text-to-speech voice is not a problem,” she said.

She also highlighted the importance of open education courses (OER) to promote equal access to education, which needs support in terms of content and free licensed software or software under copyright but allowing for free distribution stored in the public domain. “Higher education institutions should be encouraged to offer OER,” she said.

As in the United States and many other countries, policies and regulation regarding the utilization of AI in education are already in place.

Onno said that he encouraged his students to utilize AI but “I teach them in campus how to use AI in a correct way, which produces good results. My students have written several books that were aided by AI.”

Onno also presented several books prepared by his students to UT.

UT’s own online learning concepts and standards will work. “I believe UT will move forward, with the government policy of encouraging UT to have connections from outside,” said Alsobrook.

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