The National Actions for Teachers' Professional Development Program Universitas Terbuka

Strong support and commitment from the government to improve the professionalism of teachers has been obliged by law of Teacher No. 14/2005 and the national regular programs. In addition, to improve the quality of education the government allocated foreign loan programs and coordination of international partnerships. In the meantime, Universitas Terbuka (UT) has long been committed to strengthening teacher competence and qualification through distance and online programs. As a nation-wide university, UT implements its programs through 38 Regional Offices (RO) and one RO to serving students domicile abroad. Since 1984, UT has promoted 1,315,009 professional teachers, serving over 45% of the total number of teachers in Indonesia. To corroborate with current governmental educational policy, UT was challenged to assure its programs to be aligned with current issues of national quality development. Likewise, UT promotes efficiency in leading educational quality development through open and online teacher training programs. These programs foster teachers' continuous professional development and expertise. Partnership and collaboration with other education­ related institutions constitute apparently the key issues to succeed the programs. To conclude, it is obvious that all the programs are dully dedicated to strengthen the professionalism of teachers to be capable of meeting the national goals for nation and character building and development