| |
ABSTRACT
The lack of appropriate architectural
science laboratories to support good learning-teaching methods
has long been a problem in
Indonesia and has been suspected result in the poor building
environmental design quality. Anticipating
the global free trade era, the methods should be improved if
the students are to compete with their counterparts
from countries with well-established education system. The
current poor condition of almost all of Indonesian
life sectors has forced people to use the limited resources
more efficiently and effectively. Miraculously,
those crises, instead of affecting the availability of
computer technology significantly; they enlighten
the positive potentials of the computer technology. Computer
based virtual laboratories have become a realistic
option; they offer a comprehensive solution for technical and
non-technical problems of learning and teaching
architectural sciences.
INTRODUCTION
A virtual laboratory is a computer
laboratory with an ability to
digitally imitate conventional equipment or reproduce
real world phenomena. The term virtual is not
only used to describe the virtual nature of the laboratory
but also cunningly utilised the new trend, the
virtual technology. An observation conducted in Yogyakarta
showed students’ high enthusiasm to virtual
reality technologies.
The positive prospect of virtual
laboratory in solving problems in
learning and teaching architectural sciences
has naturally emerged from Indonesia’s current
conditions. Those very pessimistic conditions (very
poor economy, education, etc.) contain positive potentials,
which should be responded creatively. This paper
begins with a review on the present discouraging
economic situation of Indonesia, which affects
the education sector. It is followed by the discussions
on the architecture education, the architectural
science learning-teaching method, and the
promising development of computer technology. The
bright sides of the crises are explored and concluded
with the relevance of developing architectural
science virtual laboratories. Partial results
of the research on the architectural students’ knowledge
of computer hardware and software, conducted
in Yogyakarta Special Region, are presented.
ECONOMIC AND EDUCATION
Indonesia, with its more than 212
million people, is still
considered as one of the poorest countries in the world.
Average Regional Minimum Personal Income is
around US$20.00 per month, but a daily wage of less
than US$0.50 is not uncommon. Meanwhile, there
are few people who can earn more than US$100,000.00
per month. The wide gap between
the wealthy and the poor is reflected
on extreme differences of lifestyles, from a modern
(even futuristic) lifestyle in metropolitan, such
as in Jakarta to the Stone Age lifestyle in remote areas
such as in West Papua. The gap also obviously presents
in the education society, teaching and learning
facilities offered by poor and rich universities;
also between the poor and the wealthy students.
For the year 2000, the government can
only allocate 6.8 % of its
national budget for the education sector, which
is considered very low by the education society for
around 7.2 million students are predicted to drop out
from their schools. Table 1 shows a relatively low state
education expenditure per capita of three Indonesia’s
biggest cities (Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung)
compared to some cities in Asia, in 1999, according
to Asiaweek. With such a low budget, it is easy
to understand the low quality education results. Scholars
openly state that the quality of Indonesian education
system is steadily declining.
To read more :
Naskah ini
mengandung foto-foto dan terlalu besar untuk ditampilkan
dengan format homepage. Anda dapat membacanya dengan cara
mendownload dalam versi .PDF dan dibuka dengan Adobe Acrobat
Reader.
|
|
