Earn Grant Funds From DIKTI, PENS Develop Community College

EEPIS-Online, Never stop expanding education access to all over Indonesia. By that motto, EEPIS shows Community College (CC) Program. Starting from a desire to help Vocational High School (SMK) students which are less capable in financial, EEPIS has now 42 CC in several regencies in East Java.

Community College Program is Diploma 1 vocational education which has been established by EEPIS since 2002. This program is working with several SMK to increase students skill, especially in their professional field. At the beginning of creation, EEPIS make several programs like education curicculum development and training of teacher program to SMK s teacher. Now, CC education system is focusing on the consentration field study programs. For example, for the informatic engineering study program, it will betaught about programming, database system, and networks. CC education system is similiar to the distance education EEPIS, is online study with EEPIS lecturer.

"We use Open Meeting Application. The problem is when CC s infrastructure is not the same as the existing infrastructure in EEPIS. So, there are often miss connection". Said Nana Ramadijanti S.Kom,M.Kom as EEPIS Director s Assistan IV.

In the implementation of CC, students aren t face to face with lecturer directly. With Open Meeting Application, students can join study by video conference.

This November, PENS won grant funds from DIKTI in Community College Program Category II with other college such as Jember Polytechnic and Brawijaya University. For the future, the grant funds will be used for infrastructure and Open Meeting Application development. In addition, that funds are also used to create teacher modul, and to impement training of teacher to SMK s teacher.

As the graduation mark, the student is given a certificate. PENS expect an education diploma may be awarded a diploma of graduation marks. Then, PENS hope that CC can then multiply in areas other East Java.

"We just want to help Indonesian students in order to continue their education into higher education, with a minimal fee and also flattened education all over Indonesia". Added Nana Ramadijanti. (sat/mel)