Amitya Kumara

The framework of learning media development for the children with special need

Education is one of the important things in the children life, without exception for special need children. Mental retardation is a part of them, who often encountered some constraints in learning process due to their limitations. One of the obstacles encountered is to understand the learning material. In this research, it started from a believe that learn with interesting learning media through utilizing technological advances will help the student with special need. The research will propose the unique learning media by utilizing Kinect technology. As a contribution of this research, it is expected that the learning media shall increase the motivation of special need student.

GaMa Feedback Learning Model: Basic Concept and Design

Ideally, in learning there should be one teacher for one student, supported by sufficient instruments, and appropriate methods. Currently, in universities, a lecturer assists a number of students. Teachers have limited time to monitor and help a student overcome their learning problems. This paper proposes a mastery learning model using e-learning that applied control mechanism to solve above problems. It applies to group learning; yet, its object is in fact individual learning. Teachers have plenty of time to supervise, evaluate, and take necessary actions when finding a student with learning problems. The principles of control mechanism can be operated if it is already equipped with Learning Management System (LMS), in which it has been enriched with Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) and appropriate instructional. The students will be more autonomous and the teachers serve more as monitors and assistants to promote a bigger number of students that can achieve mastery.

Anti-bullying Research Programs in Kindergartens and High Schools Conducted at the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM), Yogyakarta, Indonesia: 2010–2017

This chapter reviews a series of six research studies piloting an Anti-Bullying program, Creating Friendly Classroom, conducted in kindergartens, and five research studies in high schools piloting a different Anti-Bullying program, Positive Peer Project, by students at the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A survey of the instances of bullying in kindergartens in 2010 in Sleman, Yogyakarta, and another survey of Sleman high schools in 2014 highlighted the desperate need for intervention programs to prevent bullying. UGM, under the leadership of Professor Amitya Kumara, Head of the Psychology Department, gathered teams of psychology student researchers to conduct the programs. The kindergarten programs were sequential and built on each research finding while the high school programs were conducted simultaneously in different high schools to compare the most effective approach. A variety of research tools was used to determine the overall effectiveness of the Anti-Bullying programs in creating changes. In kindergartens, the influences of the program included ‘improvements in the classroom climate’, and the ‘competence of teachers in building safe and comfortable classrooms’; children’s aggressiveness was reduced and their prosocial behaviour increased. In high schools, the Lentera Sahabat program (role-play method) was found to be the most effective in assisting students to develop skills in guiding role-playing sessions with the aim of preventing their peers from being bullied. Two complete papers, one from the Creating Friendly Classrooms research (Appendix 9) and one from the Positive Peer Project (Appendix10) are included to further clarify the research methods and findings.

User experience model in the interaction between children with special educational needs and learning media

The utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is not an unfamiliar thing and has reached almost every aspect of human life, including aspects of education and learning. The use of ICT has become a fundamental requirement in supporting the effectiveness and quality of the educational process, especially in supporting creativity and accuracy in the development and utilization of learning media. The need to develop learning media is necessary for special educational needs (SEN), which is to educate and prepare children with SEN to be able to live independently in the society. The development of learning media for children with SEN should be arranged with a clear study on the user experience (UX) model development framework. The existing challenge is how learning media could be developed with the focus on UX aspect and the ability/ limitations of children with SEN, with the hope that the prepared learning media can be used to help these difficulties and limitations in SEN, which in turn motivate children with SEN to learn. UX modeling aims to optimize the development of learning media that is appropriate for SEN, thus is expected to enhance the children with SEN experience in the process of knowledge acquisition and absorption as an independent life provision.

Design of Intelligent Tutoring System For Mastery Learning

Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is an interactive e-learning tool to help students learn independently. Currently, the implementation ITS is still in laboratory scale, means ITS has not been used in large scale using internet technology. One of the difficulties is ITS has not fulfill yet the learning needs. The main requirement of current learning based-competency is the high number of students in mastery learning, on the other hand current learning activities could not overcome the problems of student characteristics and different learning speed in each student as well. The concept of mastery learning is an approach used in competency-based learning, which consists of repetition of learning for slow students, mastering for good progress students, and enrichment for fast students. In this paper, the model of ITS is designed to accommodate the competency-based mastery learning needs and be able to follow learning speed of each student. The design of ITS has learning sequences and gradually test student`s cognitive level. It could measure the position of student`s cognitive knowledge, be able to guide to reach mastery level, and give challenges for smart students