Plant anatomy is a branch of plant biology that focuses on the internal structures and development of a plant. This topic relies heavily on visual representations such as photographs and drawings as teaching and learning tools. Therefore, visual literacy is a core skill for biology students to study plant anatomy effectively. However, do biology students have a sufficient level of visual literacy particularly in the case of plant anatomy? This current study was conducted to provide answers to this question. To collect relevant information, this study involved 79 university sophomores studying plant anatomy in Indonesia. Using a case study design, two data collection methods included a test and semi-structured interviews to investigate to what extent biology students are visually literate in interpreting plant anatomy-based photographs. The author-designed test, Plant Anatomy Diagnostic Test (PADI), consisted of two sections. Section 1 comprised five four-tier multiple choice items linked to photographs of a plant, whereas section 2 was a drawing task. The test was distributed to all student participants, while the interview sections involved a subgroup of 15 students. All collected data were analysed separately, then the results were compared and compiled to triangulate the findings. The results of this current study supported and triangulated the fact that the biology students had difficulties to interpret, understand, and generate visualizations of the presented plants’ photographs, indicating that their visual literacy in plant anatomy was insufficient. The primary reason for students’ insufficient visual literacy was lack of conceptual understanding that resulted in their inability to apply and integrate knowledge. The implications of the research findings are also discussed.
The adoption of blended learning at university levels is pervasive. This learning approach is deemed to be more effective compared to face-to-face or online learning. To prove the claim, this study aimed to investigate a gap that may be existed between students’ expectations and perceptions of blended learning implementation at the Science Department in a university in Surabaya, Indonesia. A questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were utilized to gather relevant information from 79 preservice science teachers who have experienced blended learning in science subjects. The gaps between expectations and perceptions were measured using Cohen’s effect size. Overall, the effect size of students’ expectations and perceptions of the blended learning implementation exceeded 0.5 and is categorized as large. The aspects with large effect size values included the number of interactions between students and teachers. These findings indicated that the implementations of blended learning in science subjects were not run well.Implications of this study are discussed.
The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of two problem-solving cycles. The effectiveness of thinking skills was measured through the achievement of learning outcomes of problem solving skills and mastery of the concept of Plant Anatomy. The study was conducted on 96 students at Plant Anatomy course. The research type was quantitative research with a quasi-experiment method. The research design used one group pretest-posttest design. The collected data were analysed descriptively based on the percentage of learning mastery and the average of N-gain. The data indicated a significant difference in the students' problem-solving skills between the pre-test and post-test with the N-gain value was categorized as a medium level. Moreover, 75% of learning indicators have been completed by the students. In relation to the conceptual understanding, the results showed that the percentages of students who could complete the topics of a stem, a root, and a leaf were 80,21%, 71,88%, and 84,98%, respectively. Therefore, it suggested that the two cycles of problem-solving cycles implemented in this study were effective.
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