Influence of Blog Media on Improving the Essay Writing Skills of S-1 Pharmacy Study Program Students of STIKES Borneo Lestari

Abstract

Digital education forms a fundamental part of the industrial revolution 4.0 that integrates digital technology into education. This research can be an alternative, new breakthrough or innovation to improve students’ essay writing skills as an educational adaptation in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Blogs are a digital learning medium used for online writing that can help students in improving their essay writing skill. The current study is a quantitative research with a pseudo-experimental design. First, two classes were randomly selected to act as the experiment and control groups. Second, both groups were asked to take a preliminary test to find out their initial ability of mastering concepts and essay writing skills on topics with pharmaceutical materials nature and health theme. Third, both groups were given a learning model with different treatments: blog media was used to measure the essay writing skill in the experiment group, while in the control group, natural/conventional treatments were used. The results of this study showed significant differences at the beginning of learning (before the treatment) with the students’ understanding of essay writing between the experiment and control groups. The results of the final writing ability (after the treatment) were measured using a post-test understanding of essay writing. The result was a significant difference, in that, the ability to write essays in the experiment group was higher and many of them achieved the targeted competence. Therefore, we conclude that there was an influence of blog media use on the understanding ability of essay writing on the students of the Pharmacy Program of STIKES Borneo Lestari Banjarbaru.
 Keywords: blog, learning media, essay writing