Leni Septiani, a student of the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Study Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Semarang State University, won first place in the National Essay Competition organized by the Elementary School Teacher Education Student Association (PGSD) Campus III FIPP, Yogyakarta State University. The announcement of the championship was held on August 7, 2023.
The competition carries the theme “Basic Education Transformation in the Digital Era 4.0”. In her essay, Leni takes the title “Epimo: Actualization of Literature with an Empathy Booster Dimension in Achieving School Well-Being”. He wrote the article because of the many phenomena of bullying at the elementary school level.
“Based on data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 41.1% of students have been victims of bullying. Indonesia is also ranked fifth as the country with the most cases of bullying in the world. In addition, there is a lot of news in various media about victims of bullying,” she said.
According to the student who likes to read, she has read a journal that explains bullying related to empathy. “If student empathy is consistently low, bullying will continue to occur, which can reduce school well-being,” she explained.
Leni packaged her ideas to be implemented as learning media through the Epimo application for grade 5 and 6 elementary school students. The application called Epimo is intended for phase C (grades 5 and 6), which aims to increase student empathy to achieve school well-being.
The student, supervised by lecturers from the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Study Program, Diyamon Prasandha SPd MPd and Qurrota Ayu Neina SPd MPd, completed his work in three weeks. He carries out writing preparations such as environmental needs analysis, data research, making application prototypes, and developing ideas.
Leni advised me never to be discouraged from participating in any competition. For him, competition is part of the growing process. She also informed me to enjoy the process. There is a process of growing and gaining experience, which will be very useful in the future. (Winarsih/Student Public Relations Staff of FBS UNNES/*)
