Developing Chemistry Practicum Module With Science, Technology ...

Proceedings of The 5th Annual International Conference Syiah Kuala University (AIC Unsyiah) 2015 In conjunction with The 8th International Conference of Chemical Engineering on Science and Applications (ChESA) 2015 September 9-11, 2015, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Developing Chemistry Practicum Module With Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Approach 1*

M. Adlim, 1Latifah Hanum, and 1Ayunda Ahlaini Melala Toa

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Chemistry Department, Teacher Training and Education Faculty (FKIP), Syiah Kuala University,Darussalam Banda Aceh, 23111 Abstract Indonesian National curriculum (K-2013) propagates to learn science as an integrated course which is in the line with STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. STEM Modules written in Bahasa Indonesia required by teachers and students as alternative references for implementing 2013-national curriculum in Indonesia but the module has been not widely published. This study compose the module by following the STEM characteristics and Research and Development (R & D) type of research with Analysis, Design, Development or Production, Implementation or Delivery and Evaluations (ADDIE) model. The module content was on fabrication and characterization of pH universal indicator made of environmental friendly materials. It was implemented at senior high school in Banda Aceh. In Science aspect, students learning pH concept, Technology : Students fabricated new paper pH indicators made of natural product (environmental friendly); Engineering : Students investigated the suitable material to support the corrosive solution and pH indicator expired date; Mathematics: Students did calculation on concentration of acid, base with pH, and cost for fabrication. After implementation, 90% of students’ test scores were above the school passing grade. The students’ responds was 92% positive. Students’ learning activities reached 82.28% from the expected performance. Keywords: STEM, Chemistry, Module, Practicum, ADDIE

Introduction STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is integrated discipline which is different from segregated subject as practiced in previous Indonesian curriculum (Becker & Park, 2011). STEM model proposes a link between conceptual knowledge and the real life problem (Fulton, 2011 & Figliano, 2007). In industries and nature, problems and the solution are complexes and integrated. Water purification for example, it has been developed as combination of chemistry, biology, physics, technology, engineering and mathematics. Thereby education should accommodate students to learn some issues as integrated knowledge in where STEM model instructed. Indonesia also has revise from the subject-matter curriculum into2014 curriculum (framework) in which scientific process and integrated science are ones of the emphasis. Although science subject in junior high school was named as integrated science in fact practically those are taught as segregation lesson. The physic teachers teach physics and biological teachers teach biology almost without integration. However the learning material still far from adequate and teachers also have been not well trained to teach integrated science teaching since the teacher training institutions have not accommodated the integrated science courses and dominated by segregation discipline. Pre-service teachers are trained to be chemistry, physics, and biology and mathematics teachers.

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Some studies related to STEM issue has been published but those dominated by survey on the tendency of students to choose STEM careers among different socio-economy backgrounds. Some skill that became interest by most processional is related with STEM methods (Bernstein, 2015). Application of STEM gave positive influence for student learning behavior in forms of cognition and behavioral intentions for high school and vocational school students (Lu et al, 2011). Dauglas and Strobel (2015) reported that students from different races and district schools in US have similar hope and goals. STEM education has been interesting studies recently and the numbers increased tremendously since 2003 as shown by the increasing number of dissertation in STEM (Banning & Folkestad, 2012). Student perceptions of Science, Technology, Engineeringand Mathematics (STEM) content and careers was studied by Christensen et al (2014) and they found that students that involved in residential early admission had STEM characters as STEM professional and less similar to traditional senior high school students. The effectiveness of STEM teaching was also affected by gender, systemizing of teacher role (Dedic et al, 2012). Many countries give priority on the their education curriculum (Bell, 2015) being much attention as by policy maker (Gough, 2014). STEM education might be carry out using elearning using online (virtual laboratory) as suggested by Jong et al (2014) and also applicable for high school (Lam et al, 2008). STEM can be integrated and has similar principle with Project Based Learning (Savage et al, 2007). Report on STEM modul and the instructional media are rare except some examples that are available online from http://www.stemmodule.com/. This study was conducted as Research and Development (R & D) methods with Analysis, Design, Development or Production, Implementation or Delivery and Evaluations (ADDIE) model (Dick & Carey, 2004). Research Methods Module development was carried out with R & D Method with ADDIE model, starting with analysis of need assessment for STEM module for chemistry teaching was conducted by doing interviews with education experts, high school teachers and also students. Direct observation to several schools, local bookstore and internet searching were also performed to investigate the existence such STEM module. After confirmed that STEM module for chemistry learning had not been available and being accessed freely, then chemistry topics was screened. Several high schoolchemistry topics were analyzed, due to time limitation, we selected two topics that have potential to be integrated with technology, engineering and mathematics concepts. Those topics should also popular among high school students, as interesting issues in their daily life, so that they can demonstrate their creativities.Having indentified the topics, the chemistry learning indicators documented in the high school curriculum were selected and used Scope of Work in developing the STEM module. Some considerations including level of knowledge of the students, teacher capacity and high school laboratory support. The following was design, develop and implementation of the modul for senior high school students.Implementation was conducted on February 26-28, 2013 at “SMA Lab School Unsyiah”, senior high school located at Syiah Kuala University campus, it as a lab school for teacher training faculty. There were 30 students (9 boys and 21 girls) that were chosen with purposive sampling. Chemistry undergraduate representatives of FKIP Syiah Kuala University were participants for module STEM implementations at university classroom. The students were given pretest, module implementation then, post-test. Students and chemistry high school teachers were also asked to respond the quality of module and STEM model as the module implementation. The module was revised again according to responds & suggestions from the respondents. Result and Discussion Analysis 324


Using google searching, we have search weather STEM module written in Bahasa Indonesia are available as printed book, module or others, by using keywords: “modul pembelajaran STEM”. Until this paper written, we did not found yet a complete STEM module written in Bahasa Indonesia. STEM module was none in senior high schools in Banda Aceh and neither at printed book at Syiah Kuala University. Based on interview with senior school teachers (5 persons) and lecturers (5 persons) and chemistry undergraduate students (10 persons), STEM module is required to improve student motivation for science and also will be significant for chemistry teaching in order to link chemistry conceptual with real life problem and technology. High school chemistry is usually thought as pure science with conceptual approach. Some of the topics are not easily integrated with other disciplines especially at high school level of knowledge. Analogue to some example in chemical engineering issues, topics of thermochemistry, chemistry of solution, redox and electrochemistry are among popular topics in industry therefore they are considered easy or moderate to be integrated with other disciplines. Based on this consideration, STEM module were composed for Acid base concept Design STEM module was design following the aspect of: Project objective:Students learn how to manufacture and characterize pH paper indicator made of natural products. Learning objective; Science (chemistry): Students could explain the natural pH indicator & investigated the pH range; Technology : Students fabricated new paper pH indicators made of natural product (environmental friendly); Engineering: Students investigated the suitable material to support the corrosive solution and pH indicator expired date; Mathematics: Students did calculation on concentration of acid, base with pH, and cost for fabrication Development The module has designed verifying the web-existing STEM Module. This module is composed based on the standards of competence and basic competences as stated in high school curriculum. Student Worksheet (LKS) was designed in which students were given pictures to be narrated by the students and to be used as the experimental procedure. After all the above process is completed and the draft modules have been arranged according to the components of the module, then it was validated by STEM expert. This is suggested by Darma (2008) that “the procedure of writing the module as the process of preparing learning materials packed systematically making it ready for use in achieving competencies or sub-competencies expected”. The module also accommodate relevancy in life as the ideal chemistry module suggested by Holbrook (2005). It also aligned with ideas of King et al (2008) that chemistry should be learnt in an integrated context that has connections with real life. The worksheet in module also guided students to have experience in concrete experience as the ideal teaching strategy according to Lopes et al (2011). STEM module design process consists of a front cover design of the module, setting paper forms, display module, and the shape or size of the modules are expected to arouse and attract the attention of students. As for some form of structural module STEM image can be seen in Fig. 1.

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Fig. 1. Representative image of STEM modules, student activities and the products In general, the module was designed to have attractive appearance and the simple sentences as well as also inspiring images that will make students interested to see and read the modules, in contrast to the traditional text book; it is wordy and mostly theoretical. This lesson module also addressed some practice questions that help students to practice and resolving about a matter relating to the determination of pH theoretically. In addition to the subject matter, the module is equipped with a STEM worksheet. This sheet contains interesting information relates to daily life. At the end of the description, encouragement of learning was delivered to the students. Student worksheet contained in this module consists of experimental purposes, a brief description of the universal indicators, tools and materials used in the experiment, the working procedures as well as some questions related to the experiment. Unlike the student worksheet in general, working procedures in STEM student worksheet is provided in the form of images. The module contains several questions that guided them to do experiments and students answer the questions on the worksheet provided in the module. This student worksheet created by integrating four elements, namely STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Working procedures contained in the Student Worksheet (LKS) STEM presented in Fig. 1 Implementation of module in chemistry learning class The learning process in this study was conducted in three phases, namely: Planning: prior to the implementation, that were permission letter from the school, research instruments, laboratory feasibility and evaluation of learning. The research instrument used was valid with the reliability test score of0.796. Another instrument in this study was the observation sheets, questionnaires and STEM module and they were considered valid by the reviewer team. The school laboratory was considered feasible to be used. Teaching and learning activities In first day teaching, students were given apperception and motivation to generate interest in learning. They were given pre-test consisting of 10 multiple choice questions. The students were grouped in 6 that have 5 students for each. Students learn to use the concept Module STEM degree of acidity (pH). Students are also given exercises to train the understanding of the material that has been studied. Upon completion students are asked to write down the answers problem on the board. In the closing activity of the students are asked to reflect on the learning process that has been done. At the second day it was given apperception and motivation. Students conducted experiment after they made the experimental design individually on how to create a universal indicator from environmental friendly materials. The handmade pH indicator was then tested on several samples the sensitivity and the expired date. In the closing activity students were asked 326


to summarize the results of the learning that has been done. The students were given post-test that aims to see the improvement on the student's ability in doing experimental design and conducting the experiment. The conceptual tests were given also to review student understanding on the acid-base concept. Observations Student Activities Student activities duringlearning process were observed and measured using student activity observation sheet, verified the Sudijono (2006) methods. The Observers were one chemistry high school teacher and five chemistry pre-service teachers and every group of students was observed by one observer. The observers reported all component of learning activities were performed by students and every component has main score of 82.28% that implied most students involved in learning with expected activity. Learning evaluation The students have the mean pre-test score of 37.33 which was none above passing grade (75), the post-test score however was 90.33, thereby 90% of students passed the passing grade as shown in Fig. 2. This suggested that STEM implementation might have significant impact for students especially in mastering the related chemistry concepts, compared with the previous students’ score at similar lesson in last period (2010-2012), they wereonly 83.88%.According to Purity (2008), mastery learning of individual students is reached, if the student can master the learning grade material by 75%. Shifting the students’ score distribution from low (pre-test) to higher score might be due to motivation improvement after conducting the STEM experiment. This aligns with study of Milner et al (2011) that constructivism affect the student motivation to learn.

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Fig. 2. Comparisons of students’ test score distribution Scoring the student worksheet Student worksheet is a student activity sheet before conducting experiments. This sheet contains the experimental procedure in the form of an image such as that shown in Fig. 1. Before conducting the experiment students were asked to write down the experimental procedure in advance based on the pictures, the aim was to find out how the students’ understanding after they observe the image that appears on the student worksheet. These worksheets were filled out by the students in groups. The teachers reviewed their assignment and the students were allowed to conduct experiment. All groups performed very well almost in all components with main total score of 87.50. This suggested that students successfully writing their design experiment guided by still pictures and performed experiment as expected. Students’ Responses on STEM Learning Process 327


After learning process terminated, students were as to give responsesindependently without writing their name on the respond sheet. It is found that 93.33% of students felt that the experiment motivated them to be more active in learning chemistry because “it is interesting topic, not boring. 93.33% of students found that experiments that they just conducted to help them to comprehendthe concept of pH. Students argued that they did research to synthesize their own handmade pH paper indicator and characterized on pH determination.96.67% of students stated that they liked experimentation than lecturing. Percentage of positive responses of students who liked STEM module used in the study was 90.00%. Students said that module contents are very interesting because of the color, compact, solid, and clear and easy to understand, the language used is different from textbooks. STEM module makes them more active in learning was responded by 83.33%. Based on interviews between a volunteer interviewer and the representative students (high, medium, test score), they confirmed that they like STEM module and teaching process.

Conclusion STEM module for chemistry teaching written in Bahasa Indonesia is required by teachers and students since it can be alternative reference for implementation 2014 curriculum, where the similar module has not published yet. Two STEM modules have been composed, validated and implemented in senior high school chemistry classes with 92% positive responses from students. Learning activities of students using the STEM modules have score of 82.28% from the expected performance. STEM also improved the students’ mastery learning as indicated 90% of the students passed the subject passing grade. Reference Banning and Folkestad (2012). STEM education related dissertation abstracts: A bounded qualitative meta-study, Journal of Science Education Technology, 21, 730-741. DOI 10.1007/s10956-011-9361-9. Becker, K., and Park, K. 2011. Effect of Integrative Approaches Among Science, Technology,Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Subject on Students’ Learning: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis. Journal of STEM Education. 12: 23-37. Bell, D. (2015). The reality of STEM education, design and technology teachers’perception: phenomenographic study, International Journal of Technology Design Education, DOI 10.1007/s10798-015-9300-9. Bernstein, R. R. (2015). Arts and crafts as adjuncts to STEM education to foster creativity in gifted and talentedstudents, Asia Paciﬁc Education Reviews, DOI 10.1007/s12564-015-9362-01. Christensen, Knezek and Wood (2014). Student perceptions of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) content and careers, Computer in Human Behavior, 34, 173-186. Darma, S. 2008. Penulisan Modul. Jakarta: Ditjen PMPTK. Dedic, H., Jungert, T., Rosenfield, A. S. (2012). Roles that Gender, Systemizing and Teacher Support Play In STEM Education, B´eraud et al. (eds.), Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers, 115–129, © 2012 Sense Publishers. Dick, W., and Carey, L. (2004). The Systematic Design of Instruction. Allyn & Bacon; 6 edition. ISBN 0205412742 Douglas, K. A., and Strobel, J. (2015). Hope and Goal Survey for use in STEM elementary education, InternationalJournal of Technology Design Education, 25, 245-259. Figliano, F. 2007. Strategies for Integrating STEM Content: A Pilot Case Study. Virginia: Polytechnic Institute and State University Press. Fulton, K. 2011. STEM Teachers in Professional Learning Communities: From Good Teacher to Great Teaching. Washington: National Commission on Teaching and

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