The Faculty of Humanities Universitas Indonesia in collaboration with Taipei Economic Trade Office has held a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Taiwan’s Dynamic Contemporary Culture, for 10 weeks (November 2021 – January 2022) on idols.ui.ac.id (Universitas Indonesia’s MOOC platform).
The course was designed by experts on cultural studies; Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan, PhD. and Prof. Manneke Budiman. Two online tutors, Wina Aprilia Tirtapradja, M.A., and Soulaya Lestary, M.Sc, were also involved to support students’ digital learning experience through the platform.
Taiwan’s Dynamic Contemporary Culture is also part of the implementation of the new curriculum in Indonesian higher education, called Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) or Emancipated Learning Independent Campus in which students are encouraged to do experiential learning in different field of studies. Hence, MOOCs are some of the ways to cater to their needs.
The objective of this MOOC is for students to be able to analyse contemporary cultural texts and practices in or from Taiwan with a cultural studies approach. Students will also gain knowledge about the dynamics of Taiwan's post-war culture (Post War Taiwan), the development of Taiwan's popular culture in the socio- political context, types of popular culture, cultural issues, and problems in the contemporary era in Taiwan as well as transnational dynamics, especially the flow of popular culture from and to other East Asian countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea and also Indonesia.
The principal learning method is discovery learning which places students as active learners in finding and exploring information on the latest issues in Taiwan. Most of the contents were also delivered through interactive features on the platform. In addition, students also had the chance to do collaborative and project-based learning to articulate the knowledge they have gained about Taiwan in the form of group discussions and poster presentations through an
online tool for creative poster presentations.
By the end of the program, the students received a certificate of completion, and it can be used for credit transfer in their department or home institution. The biggest challenge for the first time this MOOC was held was the number of participants. Since the course started late at the end of the semester, most students in the university (and other universities) have been enrolled in a large number of compulsory or elective courses. Therefore, the appeal to join a
Massive Open Online Course was not as high as we had expected. There was also a challenge since students in Indonesia were not completely familiar with MOOC since this digital learning method is something that has just recently been introduced.
The course team who designed and managed the MOOC will be doing some revisions on the course content and we will be offering a more compact version of the MOOC which will
be free and non-credit. It will be offered in a different platform, and it will be launched in a more compact version than the one we have at the moment. These changes are made based on our evaluation of the dynamics happening during the 10 weeks. We are planning to launch this revised MOOC in November and aims to attract a large number of participants not only university students but also the general public.
