Third Colloquium of UIN/IAIN

Jakarta, January 25-27, 2006

The Third UIN/IAIN Colloquium was held at State Islamic University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta, involving UIN Jakarta itself, UIN Yogyakarta, UIN Semarang, UIN Makassar, and IAIN Medan; while IAIN Bandung, UIN Malang and IAIN Banten came as observants. Among the VIPs who attended this colloquium were: the Director of Islamic Institution, MORA Dr. Arif Furqon, UIN Vice Rector Dr. Masykuri Abdillah, MA, Director of UIN Language Center Murni Djamal, Cultural Attache Donna Welton, RELO Damon Anderson.

As how it was with the 1st and 2nd Colloquium (scroll down if you are interested to know more), RELO supported this program by providing funding for transportation, accomodation, and administration of the event.

Result of the colloquium was presented to and consulted with Prof. Arif Furqon, the Director of Islamic Higher Education, MORA on February 2nd. In the report meeting, MORA stated the following:
1. MORA committed to providing financial support for the fourth colloquium to be hosted by IAIN Sumatera Utara Medan.
2. MORA supported the establishment of the Modern Language Teachers Association of Islamic Higher Institutions. But, target outcomes of the association should be further formulated as realistically as possible.
3. MORA would provide web space for the association particularly for Modern Languages Sharing of Best Practices at the MORA website
4. MORA asked the materials development committee to list commercial books which are needed for materials development purposes.
5. MORA would encourage Rectors to pay more attention to team building, teamwork, networking, and sharing of best practices to promote the improved quality of modern language programs at their institutions. For this purpose, the Ministry was very concerned with:
• setting the national standard and threshold for English/Arabic Proficiency to be achieved by the students of IAINs, UINs, and STAINs in both English/Arabic and non English-Arabic Departments. Any institution can set a higher level of the proficiency but not a lower one.
• developing models of standardized tests to accurately measure the attainment level of the proficiency.
• developing models of modern language programs on the institutional level to achive the proficiency. The models will certainly vary but they move towards the same direction, achieving the standard and threshold of the proficiency.
• The project will be piloted at the institution that is currently hosting a RELO Fellow or hosted the Fellow in the past.

A wonderful commitment and result of a colloquium. And with the commitment MORA had stated, RELO felt like it had accomplished something important. Not only regarding the development of language teaching in UIN/IAIN circle, but also that MORA had taken the ownership of the ELT development efforts.


For additional information:
The first Colloquium was held in UIN Yogyakarta in 2004. The initial idea came from Prof. Dr. Amin Abdullah, Rector of UIN Yogyakarta who would like to see English as one of the modern languages taught in UIN/IAIN circle get a better and stronger position academically. RELO then sponsored a colloquium involving the 4 UIN/IAIN hosting the English Language Fellows at that time, i.e. UIN Yogyakarta, IAIN Makassar, IAIN Medan and IAIN Semarang. The first was really a sharing session, where each of the UIN/IAIN shared the best practices they had so far been doing in each respective institutions.

The second colloquium was hosted by UIN Makassar, involving the same 4 UIN/IAIN plus the UIN Jakarta, and what made it special was that it was visited by one of the important figure in Islamic Education Directorate, from MORA (Ministry of Religious Affairs). One of the interesting things learned was that by then some best practices shared in the first colloquium were practiced by the other institutions. From all the discussion came up the need to have something standardized and the need to form special interest group of materials writing, assesment, and other things. These issues would be discussed further in the third colloquium.