BANDUNG – A total of 160 lecturers from Universitas Widyatama participated in an intensive workshop on textbook development at the Seminar Room in Building B, Bandung City, on Thursday (July 31, 2025). This activity, initiated by the Research, Community Service & Intellectual Capital Bureau (P2M), aims to improve the quality of teaching materials used by lecturers, from modules or presentation slides to high-quality reference books. To achieve this goal, the workshop invited prolific author Prof. Dr. H. Suwatno, M.Si., as the main speaker.
Strategies for Productive Lecturers to Earn Credit Points
In her speech, the Head of the P2M Bureau, Eriana Kartadjumena, S.E., M.M.Ph.D., Ak., C.A., CSRS., emphasized the importance of this activity for the lecturers’ careers and the fulfillment of the Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi (Three Pillars of Higher Education). Her office sees an urgency to encourage lecturers’ productivity in producing written works. Although this year there has been a surge in book appreciation submissions to nearly ten, this number is still very small compared to the total of 270 lecturers.
“We are confident that all lecturers already have teaching materials. We want the quality of these materials to be improved so that they can become textbooks or reference books, thereby becoming one of the performance outputs in the field of teaching,” said Eriana. In addition, she also emphasized that the output of research grants can be published as an additional performance, especially with the existence of Decree 076, which provides appropriate appreciation for writers.
The Key to Successful Writing From the Author of 35 Books
Prof. Dr. H. Suwatno, M.Si., who was a guest speaker at the textbook writing workshop.
The workshop speaker, Prof. Dr. H. Suwatno, M.Si., who has written 35 books, shared his experiences to motivate the participants. According to him, textbooks have great benefits not only for students and lecturers, but also for improving the institution’s ranking at the global level. He tried to bust the myth that writing is a difficult and boring activity.
“Writing is not difficult in principle; writing is easy. What is difficult is getting started. Once you start, writing is enjoyable and rewarding because, in addition to inner satisfaction, there is also financial satisfaction,” said Prof. Suwatno. Furthermore, he hopes that every lecturer in attendance can produce at least one book per semester, a process that will now be made easier with the presence of an internal publisher, Utama Press.
Overcoming Plagiarism and Piracy Challenges
From the participants’ perspective, Dr. Irene Sukma L. Barus, S.E., M.Si., an accounting lecturer, welcomed the material presented. According to her, this workshop provided much-needed technical insight, especially in terms of maintaining the originality of work. She felt that she gained a lot of practical input that could be immediately applied.
“There are many benefits, one of which is that technically, I now know how to develop citations from the references we take so that we can avoid high levels of plagiarism,” explained Dr. Irene. In addition, she also highlighted the challenges of piracy in the digital age and hoped that Utama Press could be at the forefront in protecting lecturers’ work, for example by creating ebook versions that cannot be copied or printed to prevent losses for authors.
The event concluded with a presentation from Utama Press on publication opportunities and processes for faculty members. Through the synergy between workshops, university incentives, and internal publisher support, Universitas Widyatama aims to create a more productive academic ecosystem. The hope is that every faculty member will not only be able to teach but also actively produce books that are widely beneficial and protected.
Group photo at the textbook creation workshop.
