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Open and distance education institutions such as Universitas Terbuka (UT) encourage independent learning among its students, which hopefully will lead to the ability of selflearning in the workplace. This is important so that graduates will meet the requirements of competence and performance in their job. Employer perception is imperative in assessing characteristics of independent learning skill, competence and performance in line with job requirements. This paper describes the perception of graduates and their immediate supervisors about competence and independent learning skill acquired during study which impacted on their job performance. The study finds that UT's graduates have adequately met the requirements needed in the workplace in terms of independent learning skill, competence and job performance.

The use of technology in UT instructional media allows students of the Open University of Indonesia (Universitas Terbuka, UT) to improve their knowledge and skills without being hampered by distance, space, and time. This study explored the perception of UT alumni and stakeholders about the benefit of using information and communication technology (ICT) and learning media obtained during their study period in UT. The information was gathered from a tracer study conducted in 2008, which was used to evaluate 5 study programs at the Faculty of Teacher Training and Educational Science in the use of ICT and instructional media. The data were collected from 37 UT regional offices through questionnaires to a sample of alumni teachers and their principals, as well as interviews with selected alumni and stakeholders. According to the surveys and interviews, both alumni and stakeholders perceived that alumni had improved in their knowledge and skills of ICT and learning media. However, according to alumni perceptions, the knowledge and skills they had learned from UT were relatively low. On the other hand, stakeholders perceived that the alumni had good knowledge and skills of ICT and learning media. We argue that differences in perception between alumni and stakeholders result from different experiences and expectations on the part of each group.