Alternative model of curriculum development for vocational higher education: Indonesian perspective

The enactment of national standards of higher education in Indonesia requires vocational higher education (VHE) to carry out curriculum improvements. Unfortunately, curriculum changes which are routine activities often leave new problems, such as differences in understanding how to reconstruct the higher education curriculum that is still very diverse, both between similar study programs and between universities. In fact, even though the government has published detailed guidelines, the curriculum compilers in VHE have not all been able to understand, especially how to link study materials to learning outcomes and determine the weight of courses in an accountable manner. Therefore, this article presents a practice of curriculum development in VHE that is more accountable and traceable, where each study material is equipped with an estimated time to master it. A new method is proposed, without changing the standard of the curriculum development steps in VHE that has been set by the government. Through the proposed method, we find that the weight of the course can be calculated accountably through the estimated time to reach the learning outcomes, which represents the depth and breadth of the study material.