After successfully holding the Rektor Menyapa session for Students and Parents of Students online, this time Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta held a similar session but with Lecturers and Educators at the Rector’s Lobby, 1st Floor of AR Fachruddin A Building, UMY Central Campus, on Wednesday (12/8). There were several discussions that were conveyed by the Chancellor and his staff to the lecturers and educators, one of which was related to offline or face-to-face lecture preparation which is planned to be carried out from September 2020 in several steps.
For five months, lectures at UMY have been conducted online through the MyKlass application and other applications. The sudden change from face-to-face to online lectures has given rise to several benefits and disadvantages, but the disadvantages were more felt by both students and lecturers. This became a consideration for UMY to plan on holding offline lectures, as conveyed by the UMY Rector Dr. Ir. Gunawan Budiyanto M.P. who stated that online lectures cannot replace face-to-face lectures.
“We all realize that online lectures that have been undertaken during the pandemic had some shortcomings, and in reality, they will not be able to replace face-to-face lectures. However, with the current conditions, face-to-face lectures will be adapted to a new pattern. We are currently preparing a protocol on how to implement new habits such as coming and going out of the classroom, providing hand sanitizers in each hallway, and implementing social distancing in the classroom with a minimum seating arrangement of one-meter distance,” he said.
UMY plans to carry out a face-to-face lecture program in stages. This decision was made after the UMY COVID-19 task force team held a discussion with the Yogyakarta Special Region COVID-19 Task Force, Who concluded that UMY would be given a letter of recommendation to run offline lectures. “The UMY COVID-19 team had visited the Yogyakarta COVID-19 Task Force, the and meeting resulted in a decision that UMY would be given a letter of recommendation to be able to carry out offline lectures. The teams at UMY have worked very optimally during the pandemic, therefore I as the Chancellor would like to thank them for the sacrifices that have been made for UMY during the last five months in facing the COVID-19 situation,” continued Gunawan.
The lectures for semester 1, 3, 5, 7 students will be carried out differently, as explained by the Vice Rector for Academic Affairs, Dr. Ir. Sukamta M.T. at the Rektor Menyapa. However, even though UMY provides face-to-face lecture facilities, attendance in the classroom for students is not a component of the assessment. Sukamta said that based on a survey, as many as 65 percent of students rated offline lectures as more effective, while 35 percent of students chose online. “For students who chose to attend lectures online, they can still feel the atmosphere of the classroom because UMY has provided a web camera that will be connected to the MyKlass, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom applications. We are preparing 163 classrooms for camera installation,” he concluded. (Hbb)
