This year, the Student Creativity Program (PKM) would be different from the previous year. Several differences have been written in the 2021 PKM guidelines, including the activity format, the materials, and each team’s amount. It was stated by Achmad Kholid Alghofari, the national reviewer for PKM in the workshop held in Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo (Umsida) virtually.

He explained that the PKM was conducted strictly. Even from ten thousand participants in five fields, it was only left approximately six thousand participants funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology. Achmad Kholid said that the form of creativity and ideas form students. “The riginality of proposal portrays on the title,” he said.

The participants should acknowledge two elements; besides the title, the writing format is also essential. The writing format should be based on the guidelines; even the students with good ideas to innovate something if they do not follow the default format, the proposal would be considered a failure.

For this year, the number of each team was increased, 3-5 people per team. The name of the members should be included in the proposal. Meanwhile, the format of the activity schedule transformed from 5 months to only 3-4 months.

Afterwards, there was a transformation of the field name for PKM-R, which was previously from PKM-P. PKM-R would be focused on the student’s creativity in the technology field. “To create theory, statements, and method,” the lecturer of Faculty of Engineering Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta said.

Moreover, the PKM implementation this year would be different due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The research concept of offline implementation should apply with a strict health protocol,” Achmad Kholid said. He also added that the formatting of the Student Creativity Program in the previous years could not become a reference in this year. “If copying the previous format, the students will be failed,” he said.