1. Comprehensive Review
- The Study Program has implemented an Action Plan in a structured and well-planned manner, so that the results can be monitored from year to year, and the results can be directly evaluated to assess the level of success or failure. Some of the action plans did experience a shift due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This change or shift in the action plan needs to be studied, because this will affect the performance of FEB Unhas in the future, both for its lecturers, students, academic staff and in terms of facilities to support the learning process, etc.
- The use of the new SIKOLA learning system platform needs to be understadable for the faculty, academic support staff and students, to make sure that it has a positive impact on the learning process at FEB Unhas. Besides that, online learning support facilities need to be monitored and evaluated to make sure that they are comfortable, convenient and effective. The combination of the face-to-face lecture system and the online system may produce promising educational prospects for FEB Unhas.
- Since the School plans to enhance its Blended Learning system that allows to combine face-to-face and online teaching, action plans related to the addition of classrooms become less relevant. Instead, the School may consider a recording studio to prepare lecture materials in the form of videos, which will be uploaded on Youtube or placed on other social media to facilitate asynchronous learning.
- With the Covid-19 pandemic, it is necessary to evaluate the activities, programs, and action plans in order to make appropriate changes in the priorities and processes of implementing the plans. With the change in interaction between lecturers and students (from face-to-face to online), it is also necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of lecturer meetings, teaching processes, student thesis guidance, etc. to ensure the efficiency of the learning process. Perhaps, cost efficiency can also occur. However, additional investments need to be made to support the online learning system, including Wi-Fi spots on campus, providing internet assistance to students, etc.
- It seems that the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic are appropriately addressed.
- The School has implemented some action plans to improve lectures’ competencies based on program’s competency roadmap and planning. However, there is no clear indication how successful the action plan is in improving the lecturer competency. The new roadmap also should be translated to a new action plan to ensure sustainability and the improvement in the quality of the program.
- There is a challenging issue in implementing the action plan that deals with recruitment of new lecturers, because the number of lecturers who can be accepted depends on the policy of the Ministry of Education and the rectorate level. There is still a concern that the program might still face a shortage of lecturers. Since currently the program only follows the allocation given by the Ministry, the School should find alternative solution to overcome this shortage.
The School’s Feedback:
- We agree with PRT’s overall impression of our KAIZEN report and we plan to improve the evaluation of the impact of some of our previous changes and existing action plans.
- We agree with the suggestion from PRT that the use of SIKOLA needs to be improved again in terms of services, in particular it is necessary to evaluate how the satisfaction of users of SIKOLA services can be further improved and systematically improved in the future.
- Thank you for the suggestion, the suggestion has been accommodated by the faculty by establishing a multimedia room to accommodate lecture video recording services in order to increase the use of technology in the adoption of digital learning in faculties and departments.
- Thank you for the advice, the evaluation of online learning and digital learning adoption has been carried out systematically and gradually according to schedule. The results of the evaluation become the main material for the department to improve learning and academic services to be more efficient and effective.
- Thank you for your views on our program’s performance.
- Thank you for the advice, we will improve in terms of improving lecturer competency and competency planning that need to be prepared by the program. We agree that there needs to be a written and more systematic plan in competency improvement so that the program’s quality development will increase.
- Thank you for the advice, program, department and faculty have tried to find solutions to mitigate the risk of this shortage of lecturers by recruiting non-permanent civil servants so that the lecturer recruitment process does not rely only on centralized approach based on planning and approval from the Ministry of Education.
PRT Responses:
All the suggestion and advice are well taken by the School. It is very important that the recommendations are included and implemented in the future action plans.
2. Dramatic Quality Improvement
Title:
- Reinforcing and strengthening the Maritime Economy is the hallmark of the Economics Study Program at FEB Unhas
- “Back to basics”
- Responding to the challenges of Covid-19
- Improvements in infrastructure, the improvements are easy to see in this report.
Reasons:
- By making the maritime economy as a differentiator for the economic program at FEB Unhas among the economic programs at other universities in Indonesia, an action plan related to curriculum changes has been carried out. It was enhanced by inviting guest lecturers, prominent persons and experts in the maritime economy.
- Extensive action plans were implemented to improve the basic operations of the School. These include a monitoring system for tracking the lecturing activities, student advisory system to support student development, and learning management system to support online learning environment. The School also uses faculty meeting as a platform to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
- Many universities around the world were forced to respond urgently and on a large scale to the Covid-19 attack. This report also shows a lot of that.
- The program, facilitated by the School, had built some new rooms for the lecturers that consist of the room for senates, program meeting room, and private meeting room. Besides, there was also an increase of the number of supporting facilities such as LCD monitor, Zoom camera and smart TV. The School has also arranged additional student rooms: mentoring room for Students’ Creativity Program and a clinic for Student’s Entrepreneurship Programs located in the third floor of the faculty.
3. Matters to be noted
- Several action plans need to be continuously monitored and periodically evaluated to assess how effective their implementation is.
- If the evaluation results require revision, shift or improvement and refinement of the existing action plan, a new action plan may be developed as a substitute to ensure better effectiveness.
- Changes in the academic environment due to the Covid-19 pandemic brought about changes in the learning process at FEB Unhas, for example the SIKOLA platform as a new teaching system.
- Therefore, all parties that are involved in using and managing the platform (lecturers, students, academic staff) need appropriate training and support to make sure that the results of the learning process are more productive, effective, and efficient.
- A lot of time was spent in the interview about the word of “Maritime” in the mission statement. Maritime-based issues should be a selling factor for the School, as shown in the mission statement. But so far it doesn’t seem to be attractive, at least for international students. The School may need to provide compelling way to present the mission globally. With the new mission statement, branding effort should be designed to highlight the humanistic character of the graduates produced by the program.
- It can be confirmed that various KAIZEN efforts are being made. However, this report shows the effect of the improvement vaguely and qualitatively. Many of the items would have been easier to understand if the School provided numerical evidence.
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The School should monitor and assess the progress of the following action plans:
- Research roadmap should also include targets, such as amount of research grants awarded, number of principle investigators and number of publications.
- Utilization of new system SIKOLA: Regular feedback from the lecturers and students is important to determine the functionality and the usefulness of the system.
- Lecturer engagement and quality of teaching and learning: The School should evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process. This can be done through SIKOLA platform, to get feedback on quality of the material, lecturers, and content of courses from the students.
- Student advisory system can be integrated into the SIKOLA system for more effective monitoring of the engagement between students and lecturers.
- Web site performance should be monitored to evaluate the usability and completeness of the information for the user.
- The School should consider the following feedback received form the students during the interview:
- Opportunity for participating in student exchange
- Scholarship or funding to go abroad to further study
- Upskilling certification program to improve employability of the graduates
- Establishing student association for the program.
- Next stage of the action plans should focus on the major area of concern already highlighted by the School in the KAIZEN report.
- There is a need to improve the database quality for laboratory and library. This is very important to support student development and to support the newly developed research roadmap.
- Enhancement of faculty members’ capacity to support their career advancement, e.g. provide study abroad opportunities. The faculty and the university should provide funds for those lecturers.
- There should be a plan to provide scholarship maps to ensure that there is enough full-time professors and associate professors.
- The program should find alternative ways to cope with the shortage of lecturers.
- The program needs to increase the research funding to improve the quantity and quality of research conducted through the program laboratory.
- As indicated by the School, English training for the administrative staff will be done in 2021. It is very important that this action plan is done effectively to support the internationalization agenda of the School.
- As a part of internationalization, the School has indicated the future action plan to invite speakers from foreign universities. This is an important action plan to improve global visibility and future collaboration.
- Even though the recruitment process for foreign students is still centralized at the University, the School should improve its strategy for marketing and recruiting foreign students.
The School’s Feedback:
The School of economics has been on the step to mark the Maritime Economy as its hallmark. In Hasanuddin University, the Maritime vision was formed into some character values called “MARITIM” which should be incorporated into the content of all courses beside the Maritime Cultural Social Concept. Those tasks will be done in this year. In the next following years, the School will perform a series of actions to change some courses and to rearrange their contents. Fortunately, our curriculum is on the track with Maritime Economics which can be found in our Regional Economics group where some of those courses such as Transportation Economics and Economic Planning have a concern on sea transportation and coastal area planning. Some aspects such as sea transportation modes and infrastructures would be much better to be taught by the Faculty of Engineering’s lectures.
PRT Responses:
Once the mission and mission are set, the School should be focusing on aligning the action plan, which might require some changes and adjustments. If the School intends to include other Faculty/school in the plan, this should be properly discussed and analyzed.