Character Education through Indonesian Language Course on Higher Education

Abstract

The function of education is to develop capabilities as well as to form dignified national character and civilization in order to develop the nation’s intellectual life. The aims of education on various levels are to form the students’ character. In its implementation, character education is conducted by integrating character values in the learning process. Thus, in this study, the researcher investigated the form of the implementation of character education through the learning process of an Indonesian language course in university. This study was a case study at Universitas Muslim Indonesia (UMI). The model used in this study is the Research and Development Model by Borg and Gall as well as Brown’s stages of development. This study involved 200 university students from 13 faculties who were taught the Indonesian language. Indonesian language lecturers and the academic stakeholders of UMI also became the respondents in this study. The results found that Islamic university is a feature of character education at UMI. Furthermore, UMI students need character education through Indonesian language course. Fortunately, the lecturers had implemented character education in every element of the teaching but still not with the learning materials. Meanwhile, academic stakeholders understood that character education could be done through learning, university management, and students’ activities. This study concluded that character-based Indonesian learning materials were developed to complete character education at UMI and to meet the needs of students, lecturers, and academic stakeholders.