ITB Community Service Team Conducts Visual Mathematics Workshop at the Indigenous Community School in Kasepuhan Ciptagelar

Oleh M. Naufal Hafizh

Editor M. Naufal Hafizh

January 10, 2024 - ( update : 24-02-2024 )

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id - The Community Service Team of Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) held a "Visual Mathematics Workshop at Kasepuhan Ciptagelar Indigenous School" in August 2023. The event was held at SDN Ciptagelar, Ciptagelar Village, Sirnaresmi Village, Sukabumi Regency.

The team consists of Drs. Yudi Soeharyadi, M.Sc., Ph.D. as the chairman, and members Prof. Iwan Pranoto, M.Sc., Ph.D., Jalina Widjaja, S.Sc., M.Si., Ph.D., Oki Neswan, M.Sc., Ph.D., and Hendri Maulana, M.Si.P., from the Analysis and Geometry Research Group, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMNS) ITB.

This activity is a Research, Community Service, and Innovation (PPMI) grant from FMNS ITB for the period March to November 2023.

Drs. Yudi Soeharyadi, M.Si., Ph.D., said that the people of Kasepuhan Ciptagelar Traditional Village are open to innovation and technology. Even so, the community still upholds customs and culture, including those related to natural preservation and food security. Thus, parents and children there are very close to various tools and natural components.

This activity is motivated by the lack of teaching staff at the location and the status of recovery from the learning period during the pandemic to the normal period. Teachers are required to be more creative and innovative in smoothing the transition to normal learning. The visual mathematics workshop aims to provide an opportunity to develop innovative learning methods tailored to the local context in areas that uphold local wisdom values.

"Through this activity, we try to teach more meaningful mathematics with visual packaging that is relevant to the daily lives of elementary school students. Therefore, a visual mathematics module was created in which there are images such as rice, local game tools, leuit, and related things so that they are closer, attract interest, and are easily understood by students," he said in an interview on Tuesday (09/01/2024).

This activity, he said, showed ITB's pioneering initiative to create a fun way of learning.

Meanwhile, Jalina Widjaja, S.Si., M.Si., Ph.D., said that this workshop was ITB's first step to invite and motivate teachers to introduce mathematics more innovatively.

"We encourage teachers to develop mathematics learning. It is more sustainable if the teachers are briefed to make modules or similar books. Visual mathematics can overcome the language barrier that students often experience when learning," he said.

Learning materials, he said, can be more easily understood by students with the medium of images. Moreover, the images used are objects that are familiar to the students, making learning easier.

Oki Neswan, M.Sc., Ph.D., said that in this activity there were several findings to make a different approach in learning mathematics.

"There are other things that we also found in the process. One of them is how the captions of the pictures can be easily studied by students at home," he said.

The module received positive responses, both from teachers who kept trying something new and students who seemed enthusiastic about the form and learning materials.

The team collaborated with Gustaff H. Iskandar and Tisa Anwar from Common Room Network Foundation, and Dianing Ratri, S.Ds., M.Des., Ph.D., and A. Shanaya Muttaqy from Visual

Communication Design Study Program, Faculty of Fine Arts and Design (DKV FAD) ITB.

Common Room Network Foundation itself has a good network and relationship with many indigenous communities in Indonesia. This is related to the hope that this visual mathematics module will not only be used in Ciptagelar, but can also be used by other indigenous communities.

Reporter: M. Naufal Hafizh
Translator: Anggi Nurdiani (Manajemen, 2021)
Editor: Hanifa Juliana (Urban and Regional Planning, 2020)