UNS – Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta took a step in starting the New Normal in the September-December semester. This policy is taken based on the safety consideration and student, teacher, and academic staff health as well as to prevent the transmission of SARS-COV2 in the campus area.
In the Merdeka Belajar, Online Learning, and Tuition Relaxation held Thursday (18/6/2020) through Zoom Cloud Meeting, the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, Prof. Ahmad Yunus, explained that UNS has designed new policy to support the New Normal protocol promoted by the government. Prof. Yunus explained that the academic calendar will continue, but UNS will prioritize online learning system.
“The learning process will continue by prioritizing online system. Online theoretical learning will continue until the end of the semester or until further direction from the Covid-19 Handling Acceleration Taskforce,” Prof. Yunus explained.
In a written note to uns.ac.id on Monday (22/6/2020), UNS will also implement an online system in services for students, such as student’s consultation, administrative services, and graduation as well as professional oath-taking. As for practice and assignments, Prof. Yunus suggested that teachers and students use an online system for both activities.
“This includes final assignment research; students are suggested to use secondary data. If students need to visit the laboratory, a tight protocol needs to be implemented. Practice/final assignment that cannot be implemented through an online system can be rescheduled to the end of the semester and following the protocol,” he conveyed.
In the New Normal, the academic members of UNS are required to obey the regulations, among others, wearing a mask, do not shake hands, wash hands using soap, maintain an individual distance of 1.5 meters, and reduce 50% of the capacity of people in a room. In front of the student’s representative of Student Organization (Ormawa), Prof. Yunus also explained the implementation of Kampus Merdeka (Independent Campus) program promoted by the Minister of Education and Culture (Mendikbud) RI, Nadiem Makarim.
“The Kampus Merdeka regulation consists of four points, opening a new program, higher education accreditation system, state university with legal status, and the right to study outside of the program for three semesters,” Prof. Yunus mentioned.
In this case, UNS will conduct an online course. This policy is expected to open opportunities for students to study at the global level universities as an implementation of Kampus Merdeka, the certificate can be recognized as course under a consideration that it is in line with the course objective, the teacher can develop learning material by replicating online model learning, and to collaborate it with Online Learning System (SPADA) so that it can increase the learning citation by the teacher. Humas UNS/Yefta/Dwi
