Practicality and Effectiveness of Student Learning Using Smart Apps Creator Media to Improve Critical Thinking Abilities and Student Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Efforts made by the government to break the chain of spread of the Covid-19 virus include changing the face-to-face learning system to online distance learning, causing learning to be disrupted. The limited knowledge and skills of teachers in operating IT-based learning facilities, for example laptops and electronic learning media, have an impact on teachers having difficulty delivering learning effectively. Likewise, students who during the learning process do not have adequate supporting facilities, and many students cannot even operate IT-based learning media, causing the learning process to be ineffective. So that low student motivation and enthusiasm for learning causes student learning outcomes to decrease. The solution that researchers use in the learning process is to use the learning media "Smart Apps Creator" to facilitate effective learning because the use of Smart Apps Creator media is very practical in its operation, whether used in the online or offline learning process, it can even be used wherever students are, whether outside the schedule learning, so that it can make learning effective online. This can have an impact on improving student learning outcomes. This research aims to create practical learning using Media Smart Apps Creator. This type of research is quasi-experimental research with a learning practicality test using the average percentage of teacher and student responses, and a learning effectiveness test using a paired sample t-test. The average percentage of practical response test results from teachers and students was 93%, meaning that the Smart Apps Creator media is very practical to use as an online learning medium. Continuing research on effectiveness testing with an average pretest score of 53.9 and posttest of 84.4, the results of the paired sample t-test with a significance value of 0.000 means that the Smart Apps Creator media has high effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes. From the results obtained, it can be concluded that the use of Smart Apps Creator learning media is very practical and effective when learning online