The Development of Android Application as Teaching Material

Sri Wahyuni*, Fauzul Etfita

Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia, Indonesia

English Education Department, Islam University of Riau, Indonesia.

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menghasilkan bahan pembelajaran berbasis android yang valid dan praktis. Penelitian dan pengembangan (R & D) digunakan dalam penelitian ini yang terdiri dari lima tahap, yaitu analisis kebutuhan, desain pembelajaran, validasi, revisi, dan uji coba. Sampel adalah siswa yang telah mengambil mata kuliah English for Office. Kuesioner penilaian produk digunakan dalam penelitian ini sebagai instrumen. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, pengembangan aplikasi android sebagai bahan ajar English for Office memenuhi kriteria kelayakan dengan hasil penilaian ahli materi diperoleh kelayakan presentasi 86% dengan kategori sangat valid, hasil dari evaluasi praktisi pembelajaran sebesar 99,25% dengan kategori sangat valid, hasil evaluasi ahli media sebesar 90,21% yang dikategorikan sangat valid. Ini mengungkapkan bahwa bahan ajar berbasis android untuk mata kuliah English for office layak untuk digunakan dalam proses pembelajaran.

Kata Kunci: Android, Bahan Ajar, English for Office

The aim of this study was to obtain valid and practical android-based learning materials. Research and development (R & D) used in this study consists of five stages, such as need analysis, learning design, validation, revision, and trial test. The researcher used students who had taken English for Office class as the sample of this research. Product assessment questionnaire was used in this study as an instruments. Based on the result of the study, the development of android application as learning materials of English for office class fulfilled the eligibility criteria with the result of material expert's assessment by obtaining a feasibility of presentation of 86% with a very valid category, the result of learning practitioner's evaluation of 99.25% with very valid category, the results of media expert's evaluation of 90.21% which was categorized as very valid. This reveals that android-based learning materials of English for office subject feasible to use in the learning process

Keywords: Android, Learning Materials, English for Office

PREFACE

Smartphone cannot be separate from daily life. The number of Smartphone owners and users’ increases every year. As seen in Figure 1, it is estimated that 50.3% of all mobile users use smartphones in 2018 Statista (2014).

Based of the applicative features, smartphone users not only come from general public but also students. According to Oz (2014) and Simonova and Poulova (2017) studies, the majority of students use mobile devices in the learning process and off-campus activities. In other words, students are active mobile device users.

After seeing the positive potential of using smartphone among students, lecturers are be able to maximize student learning outcomes by organizing leaning better, especially for language learners. In addition, learners will become more motivated, interested and happy while learning process and improve students' abilities in a positive way Cavus (2016); Cavus and Ibrahim (2009); Chen and Hsu (2008); Choetal. (2018); Hsuetal (2008).

Based on those arguments, it was concluded that the smartphone integration in learning process is be able to improve the effectiveness of learning itself. However, smartphone also brings the negative potential that influences the learning process. Based on previous observations, students’ learning outcomes was decreased because they used smartphone for such unimportant things like playing online games, surfing, and chatting in their leisure time.

Furthermore, students often use their smartphones to update their status on social media when they in the middle of learning process, so they cannot focus on what the material about. In addition, students also do not want to print e-books because it is expensive and it is difficult to focus on finding the main ideas in the books, then they refuse to read it.

This statement also supported by a survey of smartphone using that conducted by Kljunić and Vukovac (2015), the survey results stated that smartphones also have negative impact that affects to effectiveness and learning outcomes. To answer these challenges, researchers are trying to develop teaching materials based on android.

Teaching material is one of important aspects in the learning process. Teaching materials need to be interactive, practical, simple, interesting, and pocket-size (portable). In addition, students need paperless teaching media. Some previous studies such as Cavus (2016), developed a smartphone application for teaching English pronunciation. Pilar et al. (2013), designed a smartphone application named SO-CALL-ME for teaching English. Then, Wu (2015) designed a smartphone application called Word Learning CET6 for teaching English vocabulary. Previous research presented the effectiveness of teaching materials for learning general English.

In this research, researchers not only develop the android-based teaching materials on smartphones, but also arrange the teaching materials based on students’ need in learning English for specific purposes, specifically for English for office. Thus, researchers are interested in conducting the research through Research and Development approach with the aim of producing teaching materials for android-based English for office courses.

METHODS

The research approach used in this research is the Research & Development method. This development research aims to produce products in the form of android-based teaching materials in valid and practical English for office courses.

The references of development method used in this research is Borg & Gall development research model in Creswell (2013), the model of learning design development for Dick et al. (2009), and Luther's model product development in Ahmad and Ilyas (2018). These development models are adapted to produce simpler development model which used as a foundation in research. Those development model was attached in Figure 1.

Furthermore, this research was consisting of five stages. First, needs analysis stage. This stage aims to gather all the information that relevant based on developing need through android-based teaching materials for English for Office courses.

Second stage is the learning design which produces learning plan in whole semester as the basis in developing teaching material. This stage is the production / media development that aims to produce the initial product. At this stage, researchers involve an application developer. After that, the application developer will do the trial test to test whether the result is based on researcher’s expectation or not. When it is done, the teaching material will publish on the play store.

The third stage is expert validation to determine the feasibility of the developed product. In this study researchers used a validator of material experts, learning practitioners, and the media to validate the product. The fourth stage is revision stage (update data on the play store) to improve the product’s quality based on experts’ validation and suggestions.

This research was conducted at Riau Islamic University. The population used in this research is the 5th semester students in the English Language Study Program. Students in this semester is take the English for office courses based on teaching materials that have been developed by researchers.

In selecting the sample, the researchers used cluster random sampling because there are lot of classes in applying the teaching materials. Based on the stages in this research development, the data collection instrument used was evaluating teaching materials questionnaire

The questionnaire is used to obtain data that relating to feasibility quality of android-based teaching materials. Meanwhile, corrections and input are used as reference in revising the teaching materials. The data will be analyzed through qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The qualitative data in this research was the critics and suggestion based on expert analysis that described qualitatively and used to revise the product development. Meanwhile, quantitative data was the score that given from media expert, material expert, learning practitioners, and students’ opinion that analyzed descriptively.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This Android-based teaching material product has passed the development research based from needs analysis that has been analyzed during English for Office learning process. It shows that students need new innovations in providing the teaching materials. Although the lecture provided the material by soft files to reduce the printing costs, students still refused to read the materials. In addition, students feel less focused in reading the soft file materials.

Based on the result of needs analysis, the researchers modified the semester learning plan to the android-based teaching materials development. Then, researchers had a discussion with application developers in developing the content material based on what researchers designed. That content is in the following link http://bit.ly/ENFORCE-BOOK.

Furthermore, researchers also involved several experts to validate the application, materials, and learning practitioners to ensure the feasibility of android-based teaching materials. So the teaching materials are revised and tested. Then the android application which is an additional teaching material in the English for Office class was declared to be very feasible with an 86% assessment of the material validator, 99.25% of the learning practitioner, and 90.21% of the material validator (see Table 1, Table 2, Table 3)

The advantage of this product it is in its ease (ease to use) and access on every smartphone that using android operating system Wahyuni ​​(2018a). To use this application, students are be able to install the app via play store. Students only need an internet connection to access the teaching materials. The size of the application also very small, around 62MB. The application can be access through the following link https://goo.gl/a9zD5v.

Based on the design in the application, the features include homepage, topic page, quiz page, and audio page. These features are designed proportionally and consistently in terms of the colors, text, and images that displayed. Also, this application has another strength in the materials sources. All the materials that provided in the application has been summarized from several sources, then it displayed simply to help students become more understand about the material. In addition, each topic is also followed by audio examples and simple quizzes. The pictures of teaching materials in the application was attached in Figure 2. Then, the picture of homepage audio and quiz was attached in Figure 3.

Researchers were revise or fixed the application easily by using Google Play. For the next update, researchers are plans to add the videos as examples for each topic, adding more exercises and assessment. (see Figure 4).

The results of this study were confirmed by several previous studies that integrates smartphones in teaching English was attract students' attention and improving their learning outcomes. Besides that, learning English using application on the smartphone tends to attract students' attention in learning and increasing their learning motivation. Muhammed (2014); Nalliveettil and Alenazi (2016); Sarhandi et al. (2017); Yao-TingSun et al. (2016); Zhang (2013).

In addition, learning English by using smartphone as the alternative or additional media in providing teaching materials shows positive student attitudes during the teaching and learning process of Wahyuni ​​(2018a); Wahyuni ​​and Etfita (2019); Wahyunietal (2015). The same results of several development studies conducted by Klímová (2018); Wahyuni ​​(2018b), research findings show that the use of smartphones and its applications produces a positive effect in learning English as a foreign language, especially in developing students' vocabulary and increasing their learning motivation.

CONCLUSION

This research is based on the stages of research development including analysis stage that become basic development of android-based teaching materials, the observation result at this stage can be concluded that students want simpler teaching materials, paperless, and easy to understand. To answer these challenges, researchers modified the semester learning plan and designed teaching materials which integrated with smartphones. Furthermore, teaching materials are suitable for students through several test from the experts related to media, material, and learning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgments and awards were given to the Directorate of Research and Community Service at the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education who supported in this research.

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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2020 Wahyuni and Etfita. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCBY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author (s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

LIST OF TABLES

1 Assessment results by material experts ……………….…………………………………….58

2 Assessment results by learning practitioners ………….……………………………….…...59

3 Assessment results by media experts……………………………………………….………..60

Android Application Development as Teach

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