M01425

CHALLENGES IN THE USE OF F-LEARN

IN SATYA WACANA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Maria Christina Eko Setyarini Satya Wacana Christian University

Jl. Diponegoro 52-60, Salatiga

e-mail: maria.setyorini@staff.uksw.edu

Abstract

As a response to the rapid growth of information technology, Satya Wacana Christian University has developed Flexible Learning Program (F-Learn). F-Learn is designed to be used parallel to regular classes. It functions as an enrichment source for the students. F-Learn is equipped with many features in which lecturers can upload materials and forms, create quizzes or tests, set the scores in assessing the quizzes or tests, and create a discussion forum. It also enables the students to upload assignments and projects, do online quizzes or tests, discuss materials with the lecturers or other students, see and give comments other students’ works. In other words, F-Learn is potential to facilitate distance learning. Many lecturers, however, do not make use of this program. In our faculty, for example, only about one-third of lectures use Learn, whereas, actually F-Learn can be very useful. Instead of making-up classes lecturers can use F-learn whenever making-up is difficult to be arranged. Like the lecturers, it seems that many students are not familiar with F-Learn. They do not use F-Learn often. Most of the students only use F-Learn whenever they have to do quizzes or test. This paper aims to describe the challenges that make lecturers choose not to use F-Learn and the ones that make the students rarely use F-Learn.

INTRODUCTION

The advancement of information and communication technologies has greatly influenced the world of education. It has made e-learning, “a learning process in which learners can communicate with their instructors and their peers, and access learning materials, over the internet or other computer networks” (Curran, 2004, p.1),become a trend in higher education. As reported by Norman et. al. (2003) in Suhail & Mugisa (2007), the demand for e-learning in various parts of the world including in USA, Europe, Asia, and Africa has increased significantly. This means to be able to survive in a more global and sophisticated world which is full of competition; higher learning institutions should be ready to equip themselves with e-learning facilities. Therefore, Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU) has prepared itself. It has developed an e-learning program called Flexible Learning that is more popular as F-Learn.

quizzes and tests with a more flexible arrangement of time, while the students can do the quizzes and tests from any place that has an internet connection. The scores of the quizzes and tests can immediately be seen by the students if the lectures has set the program. Third, F-Learn enables lecturers to display assignments and projects and enables students to submit their assignments or projects. After submitting the assignments and projects lecturers, can give feedback to their students using the discussion forum. The last feature is very useful; it often used by some lecturers to replace classes if the lecturer should leave because of seminars or other tasks given by the university and makeup classes are difficult to arrange.

In reality, however, the use of F-Learn is still low. The program has been there for about seven years, yet there are not many lecturers make use of the technology. This can be seen from the number of classes listed on F-Learn menu in each semester. This semester, most study programs only have less than ten classes listed, whereas there are many classes offered by each study program in one semester.

The fact has made the writer realize that there must be challenges faced by the lecturers in using F-Learn. As also stated by Kusumo, Kurnawan, & Putri (2012) implementing an e-learning system is not easy, many challenges should be faced to get the benefits of it. The fact has also made the writer curious to know what challenges are actually faced by SWCU lecturers regarding the use of F-Learn. As the curiosity grew bigger, the writer also considers about the possible challenges faced by the students in using the F-Learn. Therefore, the writer decided to do a small study about them.

The aim of the study is to reveal the challenges faced by the lecturers and the students in the use of F-Learn. It is expected that the study can raise awareness that implementing a program like F-Learn can sometimes be challenging so that any institution planning to have a similar program will be more prepared. The result of the study is hoped to be used as a consideration improving F-Learn application.

THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK

Andersson and Grönlund (2009) offer a conceptual framework to understand the challenges in implementing e-learning especially in developing countries like Indonesia. The framework includes thirty challenges that are classified into four major categories. The categories are individual characteristics of the teachers and students, technological challenges, course challenges, and contextual challenges. This study, due to the time constraint, only focused on one part of the framework i.e. individual characteristics of the students.

Here are the classifications of individual challenges by Andersson and Grönlund (2009)

Students’ Challenges

Motivation

Students’ motivation is a very important factor that determine the success of an e-learning implementation. However, students often have less motivation because the e-learning program is not attractive.

Conflicting Priorities

Often students have many things to do, especially those who have part-time jobs.This makes the students have to choose between accessing e-learning or doing something else.

Economy

The economic conditions of some students can be a big challenge for them to deal with e-learning. For those who can not afford the access of the internet at home, they might have to count on free WiFi that is only available in the campus.

Academic Confidence

Students with low academic achievement may encounter problems in using e-learning and understanding the materials in the e-learning.

Technological Confidence

Students should have the skills to work with computers. The also need to feel confident about the skills. The lack of the skills may disturb the learning process (Kwofie & Henten, 2011)

Social Support

Students won’t be able to concentrate well to the e-learning if they don’t live in a good environment. Family and friends play an important role in creating a good environment.

Gender

In certain societies, female students have less opportunity to study than the male students. They sometimes have to deal with “female responsibilities” first, like cleaning up the house, before they have time for e-learning.

Teachers’ Challenges

Under the category of teachers’ challenges, there are four important points. They are Technological confidence, Motivation and Commitment, Qualification and Competence, and Time.

Technological Confidence

Teachers should posses the ability to work with computer and be confident with it. The more skillful the teachers, the more creative they are in designing the material for e-learning.

Motivation and Commitment

Qualification and Competence

Qualification and competence are crucial in teaching. In implementing e-learning teachers’ qualification and competence needs to be integrated with the ability to use computer and other technologies, so that teachers always develop.

Time

Teachers should allocate more time if they are working with the e-learning system. Teacher, usually, need to gets materials, assignments, tests, and projects ready before the class begins. Teachers also needs to allocate their time to check their students’ work or assignments submitted in the e-learning system.

THE

STUDY

This study is a descriptive research. It attempts to describe the challenges that make lecturers choose not to use F-Learn and the ones that make the students rarely use F-Learn, a descriptive research describes the present status of people, attitudes and progress (LeUnes, 2002). To be able to describe the challenges survey method is applied in this research. In survey method research, participants answer questions in interviews or questionnaires (Hale, 2011).

The participants in the study are six lecturers and 86 students. The six lecturers are chosen randomly among the lecturers that do not use F-Learn in our faculty; the students are also chosen using simple random sampling. In simple random sampling each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected as subject (Castillo, 2009).

The instruments used to collect the data in this study were interview questions and questionnaires. Interviews were done to the lecturers and questionnaires were distributed to students. The interview questions and the questionnaire are asking about similar things, i.e. the challenges in the use of F-Learn in SWCU. The interviews were done in Bahasa Indonesia to make the lecturers feel more relax in answering the questions; meanwhile, the questionnaires distributed to the students are in English.

THE

FINDINGS

Students’ Challenges

The study showed that among the seven students’ individual challenges mentioned by Andersson and Grönlund (2009) only one appear to be a problem faced by the students when using F-Learn. The challenge is motivation. There were 61 students out of 86 stated that they only used F-Learn whenever they have to do assignments, quizzes or tests. They never use it to download materials and they never use the discussion forum. Only 12 said they opened F-Learn page every week to read the course materials. The other three said that they opened F-learn almost every day. Many of the students said that the F-Lean display is not attractive and boring to see that they are not interested and motivated to use it often.

work with, and they have to learn first before they can use it. This may be caused by the

academic confidence issue.

There was no student mentions about conflicting priorities, lack of social support or problems with gender. Thus, the writer assumed that the students might not face these three challenges. It means that the students are well supported by their environments in using F-Learn.

Lecturers’ Challenges

Different from the findings from the students, the result of the interview to the lecturers shows that all of the challenges listed by Andersson and Grönlund (2009) were there. Lecturers are faced with the problems of technological confidence, motivation and commitment,

qualification and competence, and time.

Technological Confidence

It seems that the lecturers have problems with technological confidence, when they were interviewed, Lectures A, D, and E revealed that they were not that confident in using F-Learn. Here are some parts of the interviews:

Excerpt 1

Saya bukan pengguna komputeryang cepat belajar tehnologi, kalau mau menggunkan F-Learn harus teriak-teriak untuk bertanya sana sini bagaimana pakainya.

I am not a computer user that can learn about technology quickly, If I want to use F-Learn I need to shout to many people asking how to use this, and that. (Lecturer A)

Excerpt 2

Saya masih harus belajar lagi, harus ada pelatihan khusus untuk yang lemot seperti saya.

I still need to learn more. There should be more training for slow people like me. (Lecturer D)

Excerpt 3

Wah untuk menggunakan F-Learn ini saya masih harus belajar pelan –pelan.

To be able to use F-Learn, I need to learn slowly. (Lecturer E)

As we can see, the three lecturers are lack of technological confident because they think that they are slow in understanding the use of F-Learn.

Motivation and Commitment

Excerpt 4

Saya sudah tahu tentang F-Learn tapi saya belum punya account karena merasa belum mau menggunakan.

I knew what F-Learn is, but I haven’t created F-Lean account for I don’t feel like to use it yet. (Lecturer B)

Excerpt 5

Saya tidak tau tentang F-Learn, saya belum pernah lihat. Saya dengar pemakaianya ribet.

I don’t have any idea of what F-Learn is. I haven’t seen it yet. I heard from other colleagues that it was not user-friendly.(Lecturer C)

The problem with Lecturer C is actually because she belief that F-Learn is not user-friendly.

Qualification and Competence

In teaching, of course, the six lecturers are all qualified and competent. However, when it deals with technology like F-Learn Lecturer A and D, F feel that they are not good enough. They feel that more trainings are needed..

Excerpt 6

Pelatihan untuk F-Learn kurang. Saya meresa perlu diadakan lagi supaya lebih bisa. The F-Lean training was not enough. There should be more trainings. (Lecturer A)

Excerpt 8

F-learn itu bukan makanan sehari hari saya, jadi ya susah.

F-Learn is not my cup of coffee, it difficult for me to use it. (Lecturer F)

Time

Lecturer A, D, E, F, said that time is one of their reasons of not using F-Learn.

Excerpt 9

untuk mengupload file saja blum bisa, mana yang harus di klik masih bingung, jadi malah pusing sendiri, menghabiskan waktu.

As I still don’t know how to upload a file properly, I become confused every time I want to use it. I take time. (Lecturer A)

Excerpt 10

CONCLUSION

The study revealed that the challenge faced by the students in using F-Learn is motivation. It’s related with the display of F-Learn that the students think is not interesting. Meanwhile, the lecturers faced four challenges. They are technological confidence, motivation

and commitment, qualification and competence, and time. Hopefully, the use of F-Learn can be

improved by overcoming those challenges.

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