Optimization of Blended-Problem Based Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic on Basic Programming Course

Abstract

The world is currently faced a complicated problem regarding the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) pandemic, and Indonesia is no exception. Covid-19 has had an impact on various aspects, one of which is the education aspect. The policy taken by the Indonesian government is to suspend all teaching and learning activities, forcing the government and educational institutions to find ways to keep learning activities going even during a pandemic. In the education sector, face-to-face learning activities in the classroom cause interaction between educators and students to be very difficult to avoid. This interaction is one of the fast transmission media in the transfer of the Covid-19 virus. The Indonesian Minister of Education and Culture issued a policy related to efforts to reduce the risk of the spread of the Covid-19 virus in the education sector by issuing a circular regarding the implementation of education policies in the emergency period of the spread of Covid-19, one of which is enforcing the learning process from home carried out by online/distance learning. The choice of distance learning is the only solution to somewhat minimize the spread of the Covid-19 virus. With the distance learning policy, it has indirectly changed the paradigm of the conventional learning system which was originally face-to-face in the classroom and then turned into a virtual one and did not meet directly in class. Online learning is carried out using various online application media such as whatsapp, zoom meeting, google meet, google classroom, and e-learning. This situations raises various problems, especially for Engineering undergraduate students. Online learning is considered less effective, especially for subjects with many practices that require a lot of direct instruction from the teacher. Furthermore as time goes by, students become tired and bored with online learning. Which lead to an ineffective learning process and decreased in learning outcome.