Participatory Learning Through Instructional Games for Functional Literacy Students of SKB Binjai

The purpose of this study is to develop participatory learning through instructional games for functional literacy students of Sanggar Kegiatan Belajar (SKB) Binjai. In general, the students of functional literacy program are adults who have not had time to complete their education in formal education, so this research is carried out to help these adults learn, given that adults will only learn something that appropriate with their needs. Based on the preliminary research, it is found that the learning process recently uses a conventional approach where the curriculum, questions, discussions, and assessments are designed by the tutor according to the needs of the learners. Through this participatory learning, students are given the freedom to determine learning programs, design, and develop learning patterns as well as release their stress from daily routine through instructional games. Learning through instructional games is defined as the application of technology in the world of learning for an educational process. The media is a tool that can be used as a channel to achieve teaching objectives. If the media is designed properly and appropriately, it can be a fun learning with high interactivity element, and it can stimulate students to remember more about the material of learning. The most common obstacles encountered in nonformal learning are the lack of collaboration among the students’ during the learning process and moreover tutor rarely gives a reflection on each meeting so that the shortcomings experienced by each student on each meeting cannot be determined and improved at the next meeting. Therefore, learning instructional games which consists of collaboration steps with tutor to plan, observe, and do reflection about the lessons. Based on the data analysis, the implementation of instructional games can increase learning activity. Increased learning activities will lead to the improvement of the quality of learning process and learning products. The application of these two aspects are proven can help students to identify the urgency of the problems occurred in the classroom, and seek for a solution in order to achieve more meaningful learning process. This result is corresponding with the concept of learning which is a process undertaken by a person to obtain changes in overall behavior that derived from the results of his/her own experience in interaction with the environment.