Periodic curriculum review of study programmes is certainly necessary to provide quality and up-to-date learning. For this reason, the Sastra Inggris programme at Unsoed held a curriculum workshop on Saturday (14/3/20) and Sunday (15/3/20). The event took place in the Meeting Room on the 2nd floor, Building A of Fakultas Ilmu Budaya Unsoed, attended by all Sastra Inggris lecturers along with the programme coordinator, head of department and vice head of Sasing, the dean’s office staff, the head of GPM, alumni and alumni employers (stakeholders). The first day of the workshop began with a presentation by the resource person, Dr. Ribut Basuki, M.A. from Universitas Petra Surabaya.
In his presentation, Dr. Basuki emphasized the importance of curriculum in adapting to the development of the times. Especially in this Industry 4.0 era, learners have different characteristics from previous eras, for example the need to be creative, the desire to learn quickly and easily, the use of communication technology and so on. If these needs are not anticipated, the programme could fail to meet market demands and will lose prospective students.
The Universitas Petra lecturer who also serves as the head of ESAI (Association of English Study Programmes in Indonesia) then provided an example of a curriculum designed in such a way as to meet the interests of prospective students while fulfilling the needs of the workplace. This presentation was also marked by lively question and answer sessions with workshop participants.
After the resource person’s presentation, the next activity was interviews with graduates and employers (stakeholders). Their presence was indeed very much needed in the development of competency-based curriculum. Some of their input included the need to strengthen basic skills relevant to workplace activities, and the need to anticipate future trends. The event then continued with a vision alignment session where all Sastra Inggris lecturers agreed to rebrand the Sastra Inggris curriculum.
The second day of the workshop at the same location began with the formulation of the programme’s vision, mission and objectives guided by the Sasing programme coordinator, Taufiqurrohman. The next agenda was determining the proportion of competencies and courses as the means to achieve them. As a result, a draft curriculum for Prodi Sasing was successfully developed. Of course, this draft still must go through several stages before it is used for future learning activities. (RPH)