Developing Online Materials for Tour Guides: A Course For Indonesian Migrant Labourers In Malaysia

drs. h. abdul salam nasution, sh., mm; hamzah puadi ilyas, ph.d; dr. santi djonhar, ma;

This research was conducted to answer the needs of the Indonesian migrant labourers to improve their English speaking skill for survival in the foreign country and for future employment as tour guides. The online learning course method was decided to be applied in order to answer the issue of tutor shortage in the organization. There were three objectives in this research. The first was to identify what contents should be incorporated in the online materials; the second was to investigate the response of the students, and the last was to study the lacks that existed in the materials developed. The material development process underwent the 7 stages of material development proposed by Nation and Macalister (2010). The stages consists of analysing the environment and the needs, following principles, setting goals and objectives, choosing contents and sequence, finding the format and presentation, monitoring and assessing, and evaluating the course. However, since the materials were presented online, the stages had to be combined with the stages specifically for online materials proposed by Hartoyo (2012). Thus, the content and sequence consisted of the selection of the types of program, materials, software, tasks, while the materials consisted of 2 parts which were the tutorials and the lessons themselves. The materials were developed and presented in the form of a website with embedded multimedia, and implemented combined with real time online classes. The students‟ responses after the implementation were generally positive, although some improvements were still needed. The possibility of implementing the materials in the form of blended learning (i.e. the blend of online and conventional face-to-face class) is highly recommended as the solution of the slow internet connection problem.