Higher Education 4.0
The Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry has made leaps in policy toward Higher Education 4.0 (Expose of the Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister in Bali, 2/2/2018).
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Soon after being sworn in, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, who is "furious" about the development of higher education in Indonesia, saw the higher education circle instantly writhe. Disruptive technology and innovation, which mark changing times, have become "trending topics" among educators.
The Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry has made leaps in policy toward Higher Education 4.0 (Expose of the Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister in Bali, 2/2/2018). This is a breath of fresh air because until now, higher education has been trapped in various kinds of nomenclature and been unable to move away from the pedagogy of the past.
The Industrial Revolution 4.0 discussed in Klaus Schwab\'s article published in the World Economic Forum, February 2016, is a fascinating read, while Jack Ma\'s lecture is a pleasant listen. Books written by Clayton M. Christensen and Rhenald Kasali on disruptive innovation are interesting to read. Then there is the collective consciousness, which is considered important in our national education curriculum.
In the face of disruptive technology and innovation that have penetrated our lives, higher education is in the spotlight. Our higher education system has failed to anticipate and respond to Industrial Revolution 4.0.
Progress in the development of infrastructure, especially buildings and classroom facilities, has indeed changed. However, the culture of learning and educating has not moved away from the tradition of decades or even centuries ago. The higher education system does not give enough space for the convergence of science and technology. The education system does not provide adequate alleys of transdisciplinary learning experiences. And, the growth of study programs and scientific fields is hampered by interdisciplinary barriers.
The Higher Education 4.0 policy should be used to make fundamental changes in our higher education system. Of course, what is meant is not just a change of instrumental input in the educational praxis like the change from face to face to blended learning, or online distance learning, and building big data, because Higher Education 4.0 pertains not only to the digitalization of education. The instrumental change will undoubtedly occur because the digital revolution has penetrated all the lines of lives. Moreover, the expected change is the innovation of the essential curricular activity, which touches the sphere of the students\' learning process and learning experience.
Reorientation of goals
The first sphere is rethinking the kind of skills the Higher Education 4.0 is aiming for. The learning needs are now changing. Competence as the basis of the achievement of the higher education curriculum is no longer adequate. The complexity of life and employment requires multi-skills. Competence to meet the blueprints of the human profession derived from definitions of particular social or professional roles must already shift to the development of metacompetence. Borrowing the terms of March Staron (2006), the change in educational orientation alters the final curricular goals from competency-based outcomes to capability.
Why capability? The world of professions experiences the dynamics of life that is no longer easy to predict, resulting in an increasingly vague definition of social roles. Many workplaces apply temporary or contract workers, and there will be more experiences to hop from one job to another as part of workers\' career. This illustrates the increasingly high labor market mobility so that the design of a higher education curriculum which is based on prediction of social roles is increasingly inadequate.
Competence is an essential element of capability. However, capable people are those with metacompetent and multiskill capabilities who can act effectively in dealing with new life problems. The trend of learning of the present generation is to hunt capability. They learn whatever they want to prepare themselves as the creators of their professions and careers. The traditional campus education system is getting boring because it does not serve the learning modalities. On the contrary, off-campus, more up-to-date learning resources, which are qualified, and fulfilling their appetites are scattered. Many students start to demand life-based learning processes and experiences. Experiences show, many young innovators whose lecture period is extended or even choose to become dropouts because our higher education system does not serve their learning modality.
The shift in the orientation of higher education from competence to capability requires an update for the curriculum platform of higher education. The current higher education curriculum development guideline, which uses the way of thinking ala the competency-based curriculum (Joshua Earnst, 2001), needs to be updated. Formulation of learning achievement which is closed and tends to decipher discrete skills need to be reviewed. The goal for more open learning achievement will give students the flexibility to develop their capability, and be open to the development of individual potential. Personalized learning gets enough space for those who have a certain learning passion.
Learning paradigm
Second, Higher Education 4.0 requires a change in the learning paradigm. Our higher education practice has thus far had an intervening character. Education guesses the social role. Education treats students as young children who need to be formed to assume the roles they create. Borrowing Professor Vincent Gasperzs\'s term, this pedagogical education is the practice of Education 1.0. Our education has not been transformed into adult education (andragogy), is the origin of Education 2.0 and 3.0, let alone heutagogical practices that give students space to design their own learning (self-directed/determined learning). Given the learning trend of the current generation, giving the role to the students themselves as designers of their own learning will be the main characteristic of Education 4.0.
Facing the era of disruptive technology and innovation, Higher Education 4.0 has to make a paradigmatic leap. It is time to abandon the practice of teaching children, and to transform the paradigm of heutagogical learning, which provides learning menu choices and opportunities for students to design their own learning. This method is also relevant to the characteristics of the present generation that is not easy to accept certain roles. A part of them want to create professions from their own identity.
Several of them start their businesses from within themselves, and others want to make their hobbies their permanent work. In the case of learning, they want many choices.
Transdisciplinary learning
Its implication, Higher Education 4.0 requires a change in academic landscape architecture that gives students the flexibility for interdisciplinary learning. Disruptive innovation is often born out of convergence and crossing of interdisciplinary science and technology. The convergence of science and technology takes place naturally in line with the broader democracy of knowledge and the openness of the discipline of sciences resulting from the science proliferation. Openness and ease of information access to various disciplines of sciences provided by information and communications technology enable the convergence of sciences and technology.
There will be no disciplines of sciences which are sterile from the influence of other disciplines. Each discipline will require roles or contributions from other disciplines. This academic nature requires a thorough change in the academic landscape, especially the spatial design of the campus environment and its cyber-physical system-based content, expanded and open curriculum design, interdisciplinary learning network system, learning resource management, and flexible academic administration services and integrated with the learning management system.
Our curriculum has been presented like kudus soup; all prepared by the sellers. The learning menu, portions and the method of eating is arranged and set by education providers up to the classroom level. Jobs and professions are defined by the higher education, as they are the creators of work and profession. And, the curriculum is designed as a "blueprint" of humans who are depicted exactly the same with occupations and professions being defined. There is no room for learners to choose the preferred menu, mix them by themselves, and eat them with their own style and way.
Higher Education 4.0 requires dynamic and flexible transdisciplinary curriculum management. The "buffet" curriculum management that provides an interdisciplinary curricular menu needs to be developed to enable students to develop new studies in their discipline through transdisciplinary learning. Students are given the opportunity to mix their own learning needs. Therefore, naturally there will be growth in new science disciplines resulting from the transdisciplinary process.
As a backup, big data management will be the backbone of higher education. Higher Education 4.0 will rely on integration of cyber systems and physical systems. These systems require unique information technology architecture to create the interaction of the three main subjects of education (lecturers, students, and curriculum) in the entire learning process.
Transdisciplinary curriculum management system, learning innovation platforms for metacompetence and capability development, and learning management system must be built within a single large data management system of the higher education.
Waras Kamdi, Chairman, Indonesia Consortium for Learning Innovation Research (I-CLIR); Professor, Malang State University
