The Impact of Co-Curricular Method on Students’ Character Education in Higher Education

Education, Polytechnic ____________________ ABSTRACT ____________________________________________________________________ Co-Curricular is considered to be able to build students' character. However, the study which describes it in higher education is very limited. The aim of this study is to acquire deep knowledge about the co-curricular program as a method in character education, so the concept and strategy to operate it efficiently and effectively can be obtained. Data is collected by using a questionnaire instrument of the Social Skill Improvement System Rating Scale or SSIS-RS (Gresham et al, 2011) distributed to students who participate in co-curricular activities belonging to various fields. Thus, 131 students were the sample of the study. The data result is analyzed by using the factor analysis technique to find out which factor is dominant and to determine the variable rank. The analysis shows that co-curricular participation has 68% impact on students’ character building. They


INTRODUCTION
Implementing character education on Bandung Polytechnic for Manufacturing (Polman Bandung) had been done which comprise some programs, mainly which are related to education, teaching, research, and community service. Particularly for students' character education, it is done in the form of 1) student creativity development by Unit of Pengembangan Kreativitas, Kewirausahaan dan Karir serta Konseling Mahasiswa (PK4M), 2) general lecture for students, 3) soft skill training for students. Meanwhile, in another higher education institution, character education is done through 1) Developing student creativity, 2) Emotional Spiritual Quotient (ESQ) training for the leader, lecturer, and student, 3) Soft skill training for students (Zuchdi as cited in Winarni, 2013).
Ideally, the implementation of character education starts concurrently in all courses, all student building activity, and management of all affairs in higher education institutions. However, it is realized that starting concurrent implementation is not an easy task. The condition of human resources and other resources influences the readiness of higher education institutions to implement character education. Therefore, the implementation of character education integrally can be started from some units of student activity in the form of co-curricular compulsory activity. In addition, to be a critical academic individual, character education is also unique because it sees human as an individual. Human is habit creature because of belief system, value system, rules or nature inherent in human, all are created from their experiences and habits in the past (Vashdev, 2012).
The assertion that student participation in co-curricular programs influences character becomes the main attention of this study. This study also explains the profile of students' character as the result of the co-curricular program in general. Etymologically, the word character derived from English, character, which means disposition or nature. Character is unique values, whether it is one's disposition, moral or personality as the result of the internalization of various policies which are believed and used as the way of viewing, thinking, speaking, and behaving in everyday life. With such meaning, character is identical with personality or morality. Personality is one's characteristic or unique property derived from the entities received from the environment, for example, family in childhood and inborn (Koesoema, 2007).
Co-curricular becomes one method to operate education in Bandung Polytechnic for Manufacturing in order to implement character education. Like higher education in general, cocurricular are divided into three fields of activity namely Arts, Special Skill and Sports (Tim Pendidikan Karakter Ditjen Dikti, 2011). Through co-curricular activities, students can integrate and automate the process of organization activity related to character education. The values of character in this study refer to four dimensions, namely: Cooperation, Assertiveness, Empathy, and Self Control. These four dimensions are taken from characters in a group of Social Skill which is categorized by Gresham & Elliot in 2008(Gresham et al, 2011. In the first dimension, cooperation comprises behavior such as helping people, sharing something, obeying the rule, and fulfilling people's requests. The second dimension, assertiveness is behavior to initiate and respond to the others' actions. In the third dimension, empathy is a behavior that shows care and respect for others' feelings and views. And the last, the fourth dimension, self-control is behavior occurs in conflict situation including the right action when facing disturbing things or compromise on something. The aim of this study is to find out how big the effect of the co-curricular method both partially and simultaneously on the implementation of character education.
From the background above, the problems identified are the implementation of character education needs to apply the right strategy/method, the priority of co-curricular as the result of differentiating the type of service, and the complexity of understanding co-curricular as a method in the implementation of character education. Polman Bandung has not fully implemented the cocurricular method. The fostering has not maximized to get students' potential character. Co-curricular is only used to fulfill one-way activity toward students, so character education is not able to give a positive effect to Polman Bandung.
To study the problem with available resources: time, cost, effort, and education level/research, the problem are: 1) The dimension of character education only comprises Cooperation, Assertiveness, Empathy, and Self-Control for priority of co-curricular material to be studied by using Social Skill Improvement System Rating Scale (SSIS-RS) instrument developed by Gresham & Elliot, 2) The object of study comprises co-curricular activity in the fields of Arts, Special Skill and Sports in Bandung Polytechnic for Manufacturing, 3)Co-curricular only as method, not comprise program material.
After delimiting the problem, it was studied and developed as follows: 1) How does the role of co-curricular activities in forming social skills in the dimensions of cooperation, assertiveness, empathy, and self-control to build character education? 2) How does the contribution of the cocurricular method to character education?
According to Marzuki (2013), character education contains three basic elements, namely knowing the good, loving the good, and doing the good. Character education not only teaches what is right and what is wrong to students but more than that, character education inculcates habituation about the good. So, students understand and are able to feel and willing to do the good. Thus, character education brings the same mission as Moral Education.
In Indonesia, the nation's character education has become a hot topic again since 2010. The government builds culture and nation's character by starting with the "Declaration of Culture and Nation's Character Education' as a national movement in January 2010. It is repeatedly asserted in President's Speech during a celebration of National Education Day, 2 May 2010. That Declaration is warned as the result of our nation's condition which shows anti-culture and anticharacter behavior (Marzuki, 2013).
Being aware of people's character conditions today, the government takes initiative to prioritize the nation's character building. It is reflected in the National Long-Term Development Plan 2005-2025 (Bappenas, 2007). This spirit is asserted implicitly in the National Long-Term Development Plan, in which character education is placed as a base to realize national development vision, to "realize the society who have a noble character, moral, ethic, culture, and civilization based on Pancasila philosophy." Character education is a solution to overcome problems in this country, and it is not only supporting positive behavior building but also improving cognitive quality (Megawangi as cited in Wahono, 2018). To support the realization of character-building ideals as mandated in Pancasila and The Preamble of 1945 Constitution and to overcome the nation problem today, then Polman Bandung made character building as one of the priority programs.
Character formation is one of the national education goals. The Article 1 of National Education System Act Year of 2003 states that among the goals of national education is to develop students' potential to have religious-spiritual, self-control, personality, intelligence, noble character, and skills needed by himself, society, and nation and country (Depdiknas, 2003). The mandate of this Act means that education is not only to create Indonesian people who are intelligent but also have personality and character.
The master design of Character Education had been implemented in supporting the realization of character education which comprises various programs, particularly which are related to education and teaching, research and community service. It has been in accord with Academic Script of Character Education in Higher Education that the implementation of character education in higher education is through three pillars of higher education, namely organization culture, student activity, and daily activity (Tim Pendidikan Karakter Ditjen Dikti, 2011).
According to Dharmawan (2014), the implementation of character education in higher education can be integrated into the activity of the three pillars of higher education, namely education, research, and community service. Character development in micro context is focusing to educational units as holistic, as it is derived in four pillars namely teaching and learning activities in the classroom, daily activities in cultural development in educational units, co-curricular and/or extracurricular, and daily activities at home and societies (Pemerintah Republik Indonesia, 2010). Hence, the implementation of the nation's character education can be integrated into student activity in the form of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.
Co-curricular activities are defined as programs or activities outside class, supervised and financed by higher education, which gives learning experience and character development related to curriculum (Dhanmeher, 2014). Co-curricular activities are voluntary, not part of the higher education curriculum, not assessed and not credit-based. In other words, the activities are done inside or outside school or campus building by establishing the organized club, association, and organization. "Co-curricular activities" also comprise student clubs, sports associations, and culture activity organizations that manage to organize those activities. Individual involvement in following co-curricular becomes an important thing, that co-curricular activity can stop various negative activities. Co-curricular and extra-curricular activities help students to handle stress and enable individual holistic development (Dhanmeher, 2014). Then, co-curricular activities can help students to understand teaching in intra-curricular better. Therefore, co-curricular activities are activities organized beyond the school hours, which can support intra-curricular activities and it is a way to reach student behavior development.

Population and Sample
The population who become the target of study are students of Polman Bandung who follow cocurricular activity in the fields of Arts, Special Skills, and Sports. The total samples are 131 students in the second semester (Arts 29 students, Special Skills 79 students, and Sports 23 students).

Research Variable
The attribute of Character Education is adapted from Social Skill Improvement System Rating Scale (SSIS-RS) to measure Index of students' character education that comprises Cooperation, Assertiveness, Empathy, and Self-Control factors.
Meanwhile, co-curricular activities in the field of Arts, Special Skill, and Sports are the independent variables that influence character education factors, which are the dependent variables.

The Procedure of Data Collection
Data taken is primary data and done by using questionnaire technique, namely distribution of question about social skill toward the variables explored by using Linkert model assessment, with scoring range respectively are 0 = "Never", 1 = "Almost Never", 2 = "Sometimes", 3 = "Often", and 4 = "Always". The type of questionnaire used is self-administered questionnaire namely the questionnaire filled by the subject of study, namely students.

The Procedure of Data Processing
Before the data are processed by the Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPPS) application program, they are processed in accordance with the stage in chart 1 as follow: Chart 1: The Stages of Data Processing

Data Analysis Technical Test
To test primary data, the authors use Factor Analysis which is a multivariate statistic technique to reduce and summarize all independent variables (Arts, Special Skills, Sports) and other variables. Factor analysis is useful to find out which factor is superior or dominant from several variables that will be selected (Riduwan, et.al., 2013).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Particularly in Polman Bandung, the application of character education is done since students enter Polman until they finish the study. The following is the mechanism of the character education process in Polman Bandung as in Chart 2.

Assessing the Appropriate Variable KMO and Bartlett's Test
The initial analysis is done to see the value of KMO-MSA (Kaiser Meyer Olikin -Measure of Sampling Adequacy), to determine whether or not it can continue the factor analysis process. The requisite to be able to continue the factor analysis process is that the value of KMO-MSA is >0.5 and significant is <0.05. The output result in Table 1 shows the number of KMO-MSA and significant for the data group of Sports. With the same stage using the SPSS program, it obtains the value of KMO-MSA and significant for another data group in Table 2. From Tables 1 and 2, all values of KMO-MSA are above 0.5 with significant under 0.05, then variable and sample had been appropriate to be analyzed further.

Anti-image Correlation
The criteria of MSA number above 0.5 means that variable still can be predicted to be analyzed further (Santoso & Tjiptono, 2002). From anti-image correlation data, there is no variable with a value of 0.5. It means that those variables are not extracted and can follow the next process.

Factoring and Rotation Total variance explained
In Tables 4 and 5, Total Variance Explained, in fact, 4 variables which are analyzed only grouped into 1 factor, namely eigenvalues which show the number more than one (3.057). Therefore, there is only 1 dominant factor formed. Factor loading is a correlation magnitude among each variable. Correlation number under 0.5 indicates a weak correlation while above 0.5 indicates a strong correlation. In Table 4 for the field of sports, it obtains a value of 3.057. The same process with the SPSS program is done for the field of special skill, arts, and combination, and it obtains the values as in Table 5. Those values respectively are (3.057; 2.381; 2.612; and 2.726) > 0.5 which means that each variable is strongly correlated with each other.

Rotated Component Matrix
From the data resulted, the rotation process doesn't occur because the factor formed is only 1.
The rotation stage will be done if the factor formed is more than 1.

Component Matrix
From Table 6, it can be explained that the component formed is only 1 and the value in each variable either for each field or combination in each component column shows the value above 0.5. It means that each variable is in a group that is similarly dominant and has a high correlation. From the explanation above, student participation in a co-curricular activity in the field of sports gives the biggest contribution in building students' social skills compared with co-curricular activity in the field of arts and special skills.
While Chart 4 shows that contribution of student participation in co-curricular can form social skill by 68% and the rest of 32% is stimulated by other factors which had not been revealed, either in another variable of social skill or another co-curricular activity.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
The contribution of student participation in co-curricular can form social skill, which is the character education, by 68%, and the rest of 32% is stimulated by other factors which had not been revealed, either in another variable of social skills or another co-curricular activity. Social skill formation by co-curricular in the field of sports is 76.42%, the field of special skill is 59.51% and the field of arts is 65.31%. The rest of each field is stimulated by other factors which had not been revealed.
Generally, the dominant factor of social skill variable with participation in co-curricular activity, respectively are: 1) empathy, 2) cooperation, 3) self-control, and 4) assertiveness. The dominant factor of social skill variable for each field of sports respectively are empathy, cooperation, assertiveness, and self-control; then in the field of special skill respectively are empathy, selfcontrol, cooperation, assertiveness; meanwhile in the field of arts are self-control, empathy, assertiveness, and cooperation.
Co-curricular in the field of sports give the most dominant contribution in social skill formation among students compared with another field. This also recommends that sports co-curricular activity needs to be paid attention more to improve students' character education.