Mataram, the University of Mataram – the Research and Community Service Institute through the Community Service Program (KKN) and Collaboration management section held a perception-sharing activity with all Vice Deans for Academic Affairs in the Unram environment. This activity took place in the main courtroom of Institute of Research Unram on Wednesday (13/9) morning.

The common perception regarding recognition of the value of KKN from the Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) activity was led directly by the Head of Institute of Research Unram, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sukartono, M.Agr., accompanied by the Coordinator for Cooperation and KKN, Dr. Ir. Misbahuddin, ST., MT., IPU., along with secretary Dr. Ni Wayan Sri Suliartini, SP., MP.

In his speech, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sukartono, M.Agr stated that the aim of implementing MBKM is to encourage students to master various knowledge that is useful for entering the world of work.

“The Merdeka Campus provides the opportunity for students to choose the courses they will take,” he said.

Furthermore, the Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture said that the MBKM policy aims to improve the competency of graduates, “both soft skills and hard skills so that they are better prepared and relevant to the needs of the times, as well as preparing graduates for future leaders of the nation who are superior and have personality,” explained Prof. Sukarno.

Meanwhile, Coordinator for Cooperation and KKN Program, Dr. Ir. Misbahuddin, ST., MT., IPU explained several important things that were the focus of this discussion, especially those related to obstacles to recognizing the value of MBKM.
“With the existence of various MBKM activities, one of which is a request for recognition of KKN scores based on MBKM activities by the Study Program to the Head of LPPM, there are several obstacles in giving KKN scores from MBKM activities,” he explained.

Some of the problems or difficulties faced include that the MBKM activity that were reported only contain activity photos/logbooks, in the application file for value recognition there are already grades from the DPL, and recognition of KKN grades can only be carried out by the KKN Coordinator and KKN Secretary with limited areas of expertise so makes it difficult to evaluate objectively.

However, with a lot of input from the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty at the University of Mataram, several solutions were found and an agreement was reached which was outlined in the conclusion, namely that the MBKM curriculum process was centralized in the study program, so that recognition of the value of KKN from MBKM activities was carried out by the study program, the principle of the assessment flow was made simple by SOP so that there is uniformity in assessment recognition, and the MBKM KKN SOP will be created by the Unram LPPM KKN team.