Malang – To strengthen its collaboration with Instituto Superior Cristal, Timor Leste, Universitas Negeri Malang holds International Online Course (IOC) 2021 from September 27 – December 27, 2021. On Monday, September 27, 2021, the opening ceremony was held at 1 p.m. (GMT+7). It was attended by the representatives of UM, consisting of the Rector of Universitas Negeri Malang, Prof. AH. Rofi’uddin; the Dean of the Faculty of Education, Prof. Bambang Budi Wiyono; the Head of the Educational Technology Department, Dr. Henry Praherdhiono; the Coordinator of the Magister Program, Dr. Dedi Kuswandi; the Director of the Office of International Affairs, Dr. Evi Eliyanah; as well as the representatives of ISC, consisting of the Rector of ISC, Dr. Sebastiao Pereira; and the Executive Director of Fundação Cristal, Dr. Agostinho dos Santos Gonçalves.
The Chief Executive of the event delivered a report regarding IOC 2021. This program provided two options for the participants, in which they could either join the credit or noncredit program. It also received a warm welcome from the ISC, proven by more than 300 registered participants. After that, Dr. Sebastiao Pereira and Dr. Agostinho dos Santos Gonçalves gave their opening remarks. They both welcomed the collaboration with UM, with hope that it could increase the quality of human resources in Timor Leste. Lastly, Prof. Bambang Budi Wiyono delivered the final speech and officially opened the online course.
The opening ceremony was followed by two lectures. The first one came from Prof. I Nyoman Sudana Degeng. He delivered a lecture entitled, “Statistical Analysis in Education”. In order to ease the communication, he chose Indonesian as the main language of the lecture. First of all, he explained that statistics is very important in educational research, as many experimental designs would be needed in the field. With the existence of statistics, data processing would be much easier. He then proceeded to explain that scientific research is systematic, which means it takes a thorough process before coming to a finding. Even before that, many steps need to be taken, such as reviewing previous research, designing the research, and collecting data.
“We don’t need to count big data now, thanks to SPSS,” said Prof. Degeng in the middle of his explanation.
With the existence of a software called SPSS, researchers do not have to count data manually. Instead, they only need to focus on how to interpret the data. Following that, he showed the participants some types of data, which are nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. He also provided some examples of those.
The first lecture ended with no questions asked from the participants. It was then continued by the second lecture, entitled “Descriptive Statistics”. It was delivered by Prof. Bambang Budi Wiyono. To begin his lecture, Prof. Wiyono explained the difference between descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. In descriptive statistics, the objective is to present data through graphics, while in inferential statistics, the objective is to draw a conclusion from a sample. Moving on, he presented three kinds of descriptive statistics: frequency distribution, central tendency, and dispersion.
In explaining the three of them, Prof. Wiyono directly used SPSS. He showed the participants the components of the software, as well as how to use it. As an example, he used the data of students’ scores in certain school subjects. With the help of the software, he was able to process the data quickly. We could also see the final output presented in the bar chart and pie chart. To close his lecture, he stressed the importance of statistics. Only by understanding that field, can we make a conclusion from the available data and predict the finding of a research.
When the Q&A session was opened by the moderator, two questions were asked. The first question deals with whether we could use manual ways to assist SPSS software. Answering this question, Prof. Wiyono explained that it’s very possible to process data manually. However, it takes such a long time because the formulas are complicated, so he suggested that everyone move to SPSS. The second question deals with the difference between two and three-variable data processing. In response to the question, Prof. Wiyono shared some formulas related to the correlation process in both two and three-variable data processing. With that, he hoped to clear the confusion of the participants.
In closing Moday’s lectures, the organizers hoped that the situation would be more conducive for the next meetings. Dr. Dedi Kuswandi advised that the participants in ISC be divided into small classes, hence they could focus more on the lecture.
“This event truly encouraged us to conduct better programs in the future,” added Dr. Dedi Kuswandi.
Author: Indah Herliani
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