Innovation plays an important role in the development of the nation. Through innovation based on science and technology, the quality of human resources will increase and encourage economic growth. Innovation can also create efficiency in the economy, so the products produced are increasingly competitive. This message was conveyed by Aryanti Savitri, Head of Scholarship & Leadership Development of the Tanoto Foundation at the 2019 Tanoto Student Research Award Media Briefing in Jakarta, Wednesday, November 27, 2019.

The Tanoto Student Research Award (TSRA) is an initiative of Tanoto Foundation in supporting young people to innovate through applied research in their respective campuses. TSRA has been running since 2007 in partnership with four universities: Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), University of North Sumatera (USU) and Hasanuddin University (Unhas). To date, Tanoto Foundation has supported 500 applied researches from the partner universities.

“Tanoto Foundation as a philanthropy organization focusing on education, encourages young people to be able to innovate and develop the application of knowledge they have received from college to become products that can be directly utilized by the community. Through the Tanoto Student Research Award, we also want to increase the number of researchers in Indonesia, especially young researchers who have grown up from universities,”

Aryanti Savitri.

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According to UNESCO report in 2016, the number of researchers in Indonesia is the lowest among the G-20 member countries. The ratio of researchers in Indonesia is 89 per 1 million population. Compared to Singapore, which has 6,658 researchers per 1 million population, Indonesia is still far behind. The ratio owned by Indonesia is also far from the ideal ratio of researchers set by the World Bank, which is between 4000-5000 researchers per 1 million population.

In TSRA 2019, Tanoto Foundation supports 54 researches in the fields of technology, health, agriculture and environment. The team from the Bogor Agricultural University, for example, created the Ebron-C (Ergonomic ‘Brondolan’ Collector), an ergonomic palm fruit leaflet (brondolan) collection tool. According to Tegar Nur Hidayat, the team’s spokesperson, this tool improves the quality and quantity of work.

“So far, palm oil leaflet citations have been done manually. In addition to being inefficient because it requires a lot of workers and is tiring when quoted by hand, citing with a scratching tool will physically damage the palm fronds. With Erbron-C, we believe that we can increase work productivity and reduce losses on palm oil yields. This tool also has several companies in Sumatra and Kalimantan,” Tegar Nur Hidayat said.

Meanwhile a team from the Bandung Institute of Technology developed ABEVEST, a modern honeycomb integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT). With this tool, breeders can monitor the condition of bees, such as the weight of honey filled, temperature, and humidity of the cage in real time. This tool is also able to harvest honey automatically through smart phone applications, so as to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of honey bee cultivation.

The better qualified a teacher is, the greater the impact on student success.

Teachers therefore have the noble responsibility of shaping the future of the nation, said Nadiem Makariem, the Indonesian Minister of Education and Culture in his 2019 National Teachers’ Day speech.

“You should want to take students out of the class to learn from the world around them, because in the real world, the ability to work and collaborate with others is what will determine success – not the ability to memorise,”

Nadiem Makarim.

Tanoto Foundation has long made it one of its missions to improve the quality of teachers in Indonesia through PINTAR, its education improvement program. A main component of PINTAR is training teachers to improve their teaching capacity.

PINTAR focuses on introducing the MIKiR (Experiencing, Interaction, Communication and Reflection) learning concept. With MIKiR, the teachers play a facilitator role in the classroom, getting their students to actively interact and communicate with their peers during lessons.

Below are some examples of teaching with MIKiR:

Encouraging creativity in the classroom 

People who enter Tri Heni Endang Rachma Pamiluwati’s fourth-grade class at SDN 25 Pekanbaru in Riau might be confused at first – there are always objects which look out of place in her classroom.

One day, it is rice, sugar, flour and measuring scales. On another day, you might see caterpillars, tadpoles and butterflies.

Getting her students to bring these unusual objects to class is all part of the teacher’s efforts to encourage them to learn actively – the rice, sugar, flour and measuring scales are meant to teach the students about lengths and weights, for example.

As a Regional Facilitator for Tanoto Foundation’s PINTAR program which aims to improve the quality of learning in Pekanbaru, Tri Heni rarely runs out of ideas for creative lessons in the classroom, especially after she has attended a MIKiR training session.

“The MIKiR method lets teachers teach lessons while the children experience and observe. After this, the children deliver the results of their observations through reflecting with their friends,”

Tri Heni.

Lecturing is not teaching

There has been a noticeable change in the students’ attitudes at MTsN 1 Balikpapan in East Kalimantan. The students are always enthusiastic to learn, regardless of which lesson is being taught.

Sri Rezeki, a teacher at the school, says this has resulted from the teachers applying MIKiR in class.

“Before, when teachers would just lecture, the students were often sleepy and bored,” she said.

However, teachers do have to put in more work when it comes to preparing lessons with MiKiR concepts, she said.

Using MIKiR to train future teachers

The MIKiR method is also used to teach students at Tanoto Foundation’s partner teacher training institutions (LPTK), including Sultan Thaha Saifuddin State Islamic University (UIN) in Jambi.

An example is when Kiki Fatmawati, a science instructor, asked the students to bring plants into the class.

The class was divided into groups with seven members each, and tasked to identify whether the plants they were assigned were dicotyledonous or monocotyledonous. This was followed by detailed discussions on how the plants breed.

This method has proven to be effective, as the students’ understanding of the material is better.

“MIKiR makes it easier for us to understand the lesson because we are able to see and feel the plants directly,” said Zulfitrah, a student at UIN.

As a lecturer at Riau University’s Teaching and Education Faculty, Mahmud’s responsibility is to teach students who are intending to become high quality teachers. Although he is qualified, Mahmud actively participates in training sessions organised by the university in collaboration with Tanoto Foundation, in a bid to further upskill himself and improve his teaching methods. Mahmud is especially grateful that he took part in a PINTAR training session held by the Foundation in Jambi, Indonesia, in 2018.

PINTAR, which means ‘smart’ in Indonesian, is a Tanoto Foundation program which aims to enhance basic education in Indonesia by improving the quality of teaching and learning, as well as school leadership. For Mahmud, the MIKiR (Experiencing, Interaction, Communication and Reflection) method he learned from PINTAR has proven to be especially useful in his job. MIKiR has had an enormous influence in making his lectures more enjoyable, and is a stimulus for students to interact more actively in his classes, he said.

“Students are more comfortable with attending my lectures since my teaching patterns have changed. There is a lot more interaction and engagement in the classroom now,” Mahmud said.

The MIKiR method places emphasis on observation and examination skills, and also encourages teamwork by getting students to work in groups. It significantly improves student learning outcomes, Mahmud said.

“Good learning models are proven through good learning outcomes. And this is evident with MIKiR, as students show improved scores in every assignment and exam,” he said.

Mahmud hopes that the practices he uses in his classes will also be used by his students when they graduate later and become teachers themselves. As a PINTAR participant, Mahmud is also committed to facilitate trainings in turn for other educators to disseminate what he has learned from Tanoto Foundation.

“I think the partnership between Tanoto Foundation and schools which are committed to improving education quality like ours has made it very easy for us as facilitators, because partner schools – from their principals to the teachers – are very supportive of any training relevant to the PINTAR program,”

Mahmud

Mahmud continues to advocate PINTAR and the MIKiR method, citing that active learning methods are the key to improving the quality of education in Indonesia.

ov“When students take an active approach to studying a subject, they can better retain the material – the knowledge is absorbed and will not be in vain,” he said.