Merdeka Belajar – Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) is a program from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia that facilitates students to learn about practical knowledge and acquire valuable skills for their future careers. Kampus Mengajar is one of the MBKM programs, which strives to offer students opportunities to learn and develop their potential outside of the classroom.
Students will be placed in 3,400 elementary schools and 375 junior high schools across Indonesia as part of the teaching campus initiative to help enhance reading and numeracy. Indonesia needs students to become teacher partners to foster engaging literacy and numeracy learning. Benefits obtained by this program are a certificate from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, living costs during the program, and transportation allowance. Kampus Mengajar allows students to take 20 credits to improve their competence, especially 6C (creativity, collaboration, communication, compassion, critical thinking, and computational logic.
One student from the English Language Education Departments (ELED) UKDW batch 2020 who joins this program is Gracela Gloria Melodia. She got a placement in SMP Negeri Satu Atap Sukanegara 3, Pontang District, Serang Regency, Banten Province. She shared that when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia opened for registration Kampus Mengajar 3 on 25 November – 10 December 2021 through web https://kampusmerdeka.kemdikbud.go.id/program she immediately checked and prepare all the requirements. The requirements of this program are active students in semester 4, no GPA lower than 3, and having teaching and or organizational experience. The requirement’s documentation for this program include letter recommendation from the dean of the faculty, academic transcript, parental consent letter, certificate of achievement, and certification organizational activities. To apply for this program, first, you need to create an account for MBKM. Once you have an account, you can make or request a Kampus Merdeka website. You can choose the Kampus Mengajar program and upload all the requirements documentation.
Kampus Mengajar has two steps of the selection process, the document selection, and the test. After uploading the document, you can wait for the result and don’t forget to always check your email during the selection. You will receive an email from Kampus Mengajar if you pass the first selection. If you give the first selection, you need to prepare yourself for the following selection, a customized test namely survey Kebhinekaan, Literasi and Numerasi test. Literasi and Numerasi tests are a little bit tricky. It would help much if you could be more careful because the test looks easy but tricky. Kampus Mengajar will send you the test run date, username, password, and the website for doing the test. After that, you can wait for the announcement to check your email or open the MBKM website. Then, don’t forget to regularly check the updates on the social media of Kampus Mengajar.
If you pass the final selection, you can choose whether to continue the program or to stop. It means that if you agree with your placements or if your parents give the consent for you to go to your placement area, you can continue the program. Suppose you or your parents have an issue with your placement, for instance because it is too far away from your home, you can choose not to continue the program. Anyway, you cannot choose your placement, the committee determines it. If you continue the program you will get more information on the school where you will be enrolled and your supervisor. Don’t forget to join the telegram group to know the new updates, contact the coordinator from your universities to help you prepare the statements of responsibility and letter of recommendation, and download the pocketbooks to see the timeline of the activity. After that, just follow the training following the timeline. (PBI/Gracela)