Developing Supplementary Books on Mangroves in Aceh Tamiang for Biology Students

Abstract

This study aimed to produce supplementary books on mangroves in Aceh Tamiang for undergraduate students in the Ecology course. Research and Development (R&D) adapted from the Thiagarajan (4D) model consisting of defining, designing, developing and disseminating stages were used. Field research was employed to develop the product. Material expert lecturers, learning design experts, and layout design experts validated the supplement book developed. Ecology lecturers and students of the Biology department at the State University of Medan assessed it. The results of the assessment by the material experts had a mean score of 86.6% in the very good/feasible category. Meanwhile, learning design experts had a mean score of 93.2% in the very good/feasible category. Likewise, the layout design experts had a mean score of 91.3% in the very good/feasible category. Responses towards the books by lecturers had a high very good/feasible category with an overall percentage of 90.26%. The students’ results based on individual, small group and limited field tests obtained the mean scores of 97.9%, 89% and 90.95%, respectively, in the very good/feasible category. These results indicated that the supplementary books that have been developed were very good/feasible. This product’s effectiveness could be seen from the gain score of 0.52 in the moderate category and the results of the Wilcoxon test t-count 0.000 < t-table 0.05. It can be concluded that using the supplement books effectively increases students’ knowledge of mangrove ecosystems with significant differences in pretest and posttest scores so that supplement books can be used as additional teaching materials for lecturers, students and readers.
 Keywords: supplementary books, mangroves, ecology course