The Effectiveness of Mini Research Application on Contextual Learning Based for Students’ Attitude at Microbiology Subject

Proceedings of The 7th Annual International Conference (AIC) Syiah Kuala University and The 6th International
Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR) in conjunction with the International Conference on Electrical
Engineering and Informatics (ICELTICs) 2017, October 18-20, 2017, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

The Effectiveness of Mini Research Application
on Contextual Learning Based for Students’
Attitude at Microbiology Subject
1*Hasruddin, 1Fauziyah
1

Department of
State University
2
Department of
State University
*

Harahap, and 2Mahmud

Biology Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science,
of Medan, Medan, 20371 Indonesia;

Chemistry Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science,
of Medan, Medan, 20371 Indonesia;

Corresponding author: hasruddin_lbsmdn@yahoo.com

Abstract
The objective of this study was to find out the effect of mini research
application on contextual learning based for students’ attitude at
microbiology subject in State University of Medan. A quasi experimental
research with pretest-posttest control group design was used in this study.
The population of this study was 6th semester students of biology
department and 2 classes chosen as the sample by applying cluster random
sampling technique. Experimental class was using mini research application
on contextual learning based while control class was using direct learning.
The instrument used to obtain the data of students’ attitude was description
questionnaire. The data were analysed by using Mann-Whitney U-Test with
used Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 22. The score of attitude
were significantly from two classes, that U =78.64, n1 = 35, n2 = 34, p =
0.05, and z = 6.327 > 1.96 means the null hypothesis was rejected,
suggesting that there is an effect of mini research application on contextual

learning based for students’ attitude. Therefore, it can be stated that mini
research application on contextual learning based as a more effective for
students’ attitude in State University of Medan.
Keywords: microbiology, lecture tools, contextual, attitude.

Introduction
Learning microbiology need also pay attention to the students’ attitude and not only
pay attention to cognitive abilities and skills. By developing the scientific attitude in
learning microbiology, will be able to grow a career interest and have the awareness
to act more correct. Awareness of the importance of scientific understanding is the
basis of the consideration of a person to determine the career of his or her life in the
future. Curiosity will be able to grow in understanding the phenomenon of
microbiology and can improve the quality of life.
The attitude is closed against one's response to a stimulus or to a particular object
which already involves factors of opinion and emotion in question such as: happy or
not happy, agree or disagree, and good or not good (Notoatmojo, 2005). Attitude is
the organization's opinion, someone's beliefs about the object or situation that is
relatively steady, accompanied by the presence of a certain feeling, and provide the
basis to the person to make a response or behave in a certain way where (Walgito,
2005). Thus, that attitude as it is retrieved from the response to the action.

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Hasruddin, Fauziyah Harahap and Mahmud

With the establishment of learning oriented student then target to note is the
formation of attitude. Attitude cannot casually form permanently. But basically,
through the perception that grew out of the knowledge that someone, will form the
attitude that ultimately continuously undergoes repairs to a more positive direction.
The attitude that formed it, will ultimately determine the nature and good deeds now
or in the future.
Attitude will essentially form the individual consciousness that determines the real
deeds or that may occur in the social activities. According to Notoatmodjo (2005), a
person's attitude is always directed to a thing or an object. Similarly, the attitude of
the students towards the subject matter of microbiology, of course will direct to the
student to determine his/her actions in doing everyday activities in a social
environment than what he got for the implementation of the knowledge and skills.
Attitudes can be influenced by the experience of the personality, the culture, the
influence of other people's opinions that he deems important, mass media,
institutional or educational institution, the institution of religion, and individual

emotion factor (Azwar, 2008). The personal experience of someone against will also
form a positive or negative attitude. A positive attitude in a person needs to be grow
because it is this attitude that will bring someone into a more positive direction.
Formation of the learning on microbiology can be in many different ways. One of the
ways that can be reached is by active learning and creative, which is able to provide
a challenge to students. There are many forms of active learning and creative, one
of which is by engaging in research learning mini research pattern of microbiology.
Microbiological material will become more attractive and the ability of the students
would be better for the learning process.
Mini research pattern basically that students do the inquiry to solve the problem.
Many solutions can be learned through inquiry. Students need to be trained in order
to have examined the ability of scientific attitudes that can be brought later in daily
life. The scientific attitude can be in the form of curiosity. Inquiry can be
constructing the scientific attitude of the students. By performing mini research
pattern, students conduct an investigation or a scientific method to find the solution
as an alternative answer to the problem.
Microbiological material is one of the subject matter for students of Biology
Education at State University of Medan, laden with scientific activities. Through mini
research students are given the opportunity to improve the cognitive ability, skills,
and also the scientific attitude. Thus, the question is how the device development

research on mini research pattern in microbiology scientific attitude towards
students. In more again, how use of mini research pattern as a result of the
development of scientific attitude towards the ability of student in microbiology
lecture. These questions formed the basis of doing this research.
Literature Review
The attitude is closed against one's response to a stimulus or to a particular
involving the opinions and emotions of a person (Notoatmodjo, 2005). From this
attitude will develop a sense of fun and a sense of agree. Poerwodarminto (2002)
defines the scientific attitude as a tendency, readiness, and willingness to give a
response or responses or behaviours in science has recognized that truth. Ajzen
(2001) stated that attitudes help to manage and simplify information processing and
memory in favour of attitude consistent material.
The scientific attitude can be developed through a process of learning, because it is
essentially learning aims to learn of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor (Dalyono,
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Proceedings of The 7th Annual International Conference (AIC) Syiah Kuala University and The 6th International
Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR) in conjunction with the International Conference on Electrical
Engineering and Informatics (ICELTICs) 2017, October 18-20, 2017, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

2005). Learning involves students actively can direct to the destination and affective
components of the learning process (Djamarah, 2002). Likewise, Furchan (2005)
states that a student can have a scientific attitude when faced with a new problem
that he knew then they tried to figure it out by doing an investigation or
experimentation.
In learning to students' character development, curiosity and creative attitude is an
important part of the scientific attitude. The scientific attitude as the establishment
or the tendency of a person to a certain stimulus is always oriented in the scientific
method (Astika, 2013). According to Harlen (1992); Fakhruddin, et al. (2010) that a
scientific attitude has many aspects, namely: to know the attitude, the attitude of
wanting to get something new, an attitude of cooperation, attitudes are not
hopeless, a stance not prejudiced attitude, honest, responsible attitude, the attitude
of the free thinking, and discipline.
Mini research is an activity that can be done in the student learning process. In the
activities of research, according to Supriadi (2002) that the student is doing an
investigation in which there is a problem, hypothesis formulation, planning
experiments, collect data, and concluded. Fachrurrazi (2011) added that the
problems under investigation must be contextual in nature so that students can be
guided towards finding its own concept. Campbell et al. (2008) states that biology
can be obtained through and the results of the investigation (using mini research) so

that students are trained using the scientific method and form a scientific attitude.
The mini-based learning research basically gives the opportunity to students to seek
information, devise hypothesis, collect data, analyze data, and making conclusions
over the data are clustered (Widayati, 2010). Through this kind of learning, students
do the learning process based on activity. In the past two decades, studies about
science student’s outcomes focused primarily on educational objectives in the
cognitive domain, but in more recent time attention has been paid to outcomes in
the affective domain (Pekel, 2006).
She and Fisher (2002) report a number of researches, that put forward the
importance affective outcomes of the education that are at least as important as
cognitive outcomes. Sanjaya (2008) add that learning involves students like pattern
mini research into contextual order gives the opportunity to students to search for
and find out for yourself from something that is questionable, so as to foster a
scientific attitude which includes an attitude of confidence.
Research Method
This research was carried out by using the research development of Borg & Gall
(1983) by arranging student worksheet based pattern mini research to measure
students’ scientific attitude. The subject of the research in this study i.e. two
persons of expert microbiological material, two persons of expert learning design,
two persons of language expert lecturer practioner, and 25 students at biology

education research currently done be in semester eigth because the students have
already obtained a lecture in microbiology six semesters ago. The subject of the
research is determined by the technique of purposive. Next do a free trial usage
pattern mini research with four topics, namely: (1) analysis of bacteria on food
(Material A), (2) analysis of mould on food (Material B), (3) analysis of bacteria in
water drinks (Material C); and (4) analysis of bacteria in vegetables (Material D). A
test done to two groups of students, for the first group was taught by using pattern
mini research in contextual learning order with seven components, namely:
contextual learning, constructivism, ask, community learning, inquiry, modelling,
reflections, and authentic assessment. This experiment is for the group of 32

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students from the class of Bio C. As a comparison in the study used Bio class D of 30
students taught with mini research pattern in direct learning.
The research was carried out in the department of biology, namely Biology
Education of State University of Medan, starting from March until June 2017.
Scientific attitude is measured in this study there were ten attitudes, namely:

curiosity, hard work, creative, independent, objective thinking, caring environment,
responsibility, honesty, and discipline. Data obtained using question form and
analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively with the percentage. Approximate data is
analyzed to find out the validity of the content and validity of the construction. The
data in the form of figures to test the hypothesis of the research analysed using
Mann-Whitney U-Test with used Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 22.00.
Results and Discussion
Results
Based on the results of validation to the two experts’ microbiological material to
validate student worksheet follows the pattern of a mini research contained in table
1 below.
Table 1. Results of the expert assessment of microbiological material against the
pattern mini research.
No Aspects that are
Score of the material
Average Criterion
accessed
A
B
C

D
1
Competency
88.45
89.62 88.34 94.52
90.23
Very good
2
Purpose
90.56
88.58 91.65 89.62
90.10
Very good
3
Depth of Material
91.45
91.64 89.88 93.40
391.59
Very good
4

Assessment Rubric
88.60
89.34 88.82 89.74
89.13
Good
5
Legibility
93.34
94.66 93.56 93.72
93.82
Very good
Average
89.77
90.77 90.45 92.20
91.08
Very good
Table 1 shows that the average score of the overall aspect of the student worksheet
with a mini research was 91.08 and included in criterion "very good", in the sense of
worth to use. Based on the results of validation to the 2 people expert evaluation to
validate student worksheet follows the pattern of a mini research material such as
microbiology found in table 2 below.
Table 2. Results of the expert assessment the evaluation of research-based
contextual mini patterns.
No Aspects that are
Score of the material
Average Criterion
accessed
A
B
C
D
1
Competency
87.82
88.83
90.46 92.26
89.84
Good
2
Purpose
92.24
89.64
92.72 88.74
90.83
Very good
3
Depth of Material
90.66
90.81
87.92 88.62
89.50
Good
4
Assessment Rubric
89.55
90.84
90.36 89.84
90.15
Very good
5
Time Management
94.42
95.72
94.71 92.94
94.48
Very good
Average
90.98
91.17
91.16 90.48
90.96
Very good
Table 2 shows that the average score of the overall aspect of the students '
worksheets was 90.96 mini research patterns and included in criterion is "very
good", in the sense of worth to use. Based on the results of validation to the 2
people from practitioner microbiology lecture material to measure the feasibility of
student worksheets mini research pattern of material such as microbiology found in
table 3 below.

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Proceedings of The 7th Annual International Conference (AIC) Syiah Kuala University and The 6th International
Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR) in conjunction with the International Conference on Electrical
Engineering and Informatics (ICELTICs) 2017, October 18-20, 2017, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Table 3. Results of Microbiology Lecturer Practitioner Assessment Mini Research
Pattern.
No Aspects that are
Score of the material
Average Criterion
accessed
A
B
C
D
1
Competence
89.82
90.68 89.54 93.62
90.91
Very good
2
Purpose
91.72
89.82 92.86 90.72
91.28
Very good
3
Depth of Material
87.61
90.47 88.81 87.32
88.55
Good
4
Assessment Rubric
89.88
88.62 90.82 92.84
90.54
Very good
5
Practically
95.14
92.74 92.84 92.85
93.39
Very good
Average
90.83
90.47 90.97 91.47
90.93
Very good
Table 3 shows that the average score of the overall aspect of the students '
worksheets was 90.93 that mini research patterns and included in criterion "very
good", in the sense of worth to use. Based on the results of validation to the 2
people linguists to measure student worksheet materials of the mini research
microbiology patterns is such as found in table 4 below.

No
1
2
3
4
5

Table 4. Results
Aspects that are
accessed
Punctuation
Terminology
Sentence Clarity
Standard Word
Suitability of
Language
Average

of Microbiology Linguist Pattern Mini Research.
Score of the material
Average Criterion
A
B
C
D
89.62
88.76 88.55 89.63
89.14
Good
92.45
87.55 91.65 88.64
90.07
Very good
90.67
92.21 90.84 94.89
92.15
Very good
89.45
90.92 89.73 89.74
89.96
Good
92.78
92.96 94.42 92.39
93.14
Very good
90.99

90.48

91.04

91.06

90.89

Very good

Table 4 shows that the average score of the overall aspect of the students'
worksheets was 90.89 that mini research patterns and included in criterion "very
good", in the sense of worth to use. The results of the descriptive analysis pretest
and posttest of the scientific attitude of college students is found in table 5 below.

No
1
2

Table 5. Pretest and posttest of the scientific attitude of college
Class
Material A
Material B
Material C
Pre
Post
Pre
Post
Pre
Post
Experiment 42.62 87.24 43.25 88.21 42.38 88.25
Control
42.21 71.43 43.28 72.28 43.08 80.46

students.
Material D
Pre
Post
42.82 87.25
42.69 84.22

Testing using the Mann-Whitney U-Test showed that a comparison of scientific
attitude of college students with the use of worksheets students with research-based
contextual mini patterns differ significantly than the control class that uses the minibased research learning pattern directly. Retrieved U = 78.64, n1 = n2 = 35, 34, p
= 0.05, and z = 6.327 > 1.96 which means that the zero hypothesis was rejected.
Thus the scientific attitudes that students with higher is taught with a mini research
with contextual learning in research compared to direct learning, where  R1 = 524
is greater than  R2 = 418. Based on a comparison of the differences of the
scientific attitude is obtained from both classes are tested of 25.36%.
Discussion
Mann-Whitney test was used to test the hypothesis where there is a significant
difference between the scientific attitudes that uses student worksheet that has
been developed following a mini research pattern. The results showed that the
students' worksheets that have been developed as a research product development
is worth used. The development of the student worksheet needs to be done as
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Hasruddin, Fauziyah Harahap and Mahmud

accommodation student needs in forming a scientific attitude. The existence of
eligibility worksheets for students learning process is because it is supported by the
component device the standard worksheet. Jaya (2014) stated that the learning
device components can be said to deserve a valid and to be used because it has the
appropriate components to achieve learning objectives.
Scientific attitudes are examined in this study there are 10 components, namely:
curiosity, hard work, creative, independent, objective thinking, caring environment,
responsibility, honesty, and discipline. The scientific attitude needs to be developed
through learning oriented to the liveliness of the student. To enable students in the
study developed student worksheet as a guide for them to learn. Azwar (2008)
states that attitude can be formed through direct experience of the learning process.
Mini research patterns in this study were basically conducts activities inquiry. Trianto
(2011) said that by using the student worksheet then will be able to guide the
students to conduct scientific investigations. Wijayanti (2015) stated that with
student worksheets can be done to achieve the competency and student learning
objectives. Izzun (2012) add to the worksheet, students conduct a series of
activities to explore the environment through active interaction with friends and
their environment.
Worksheet function can be used as a study guide college students to the process of
invention to achieve learning objectives. Arends (2013); Huda (2014) states that
active learning, such as patterns in contextual learning mini research as in this study
will reconstruct and reorganize the student experience and can provide values to
achieve the competency. Joyce (2014) stated that the pattern of learning that
enable student in learning will be able to form a personality in a scientific attitude of
college students.
Learning with a mini research in contextual learning order can create student
becoming more active and creative. It can provide the motivation to form a scientific
attitude of college students. This is in line with the thinking of Arends (2013) that
with the discovery process students will be triggered a sense of curiosity and their
motivation to be involved in the activities of inquiry. In line with the results of the
research of Pitafi (2012) stating that curiosity, rationality, willingness to take
decisions, open mind, mind critical, objective, honest, and humble. This shows that
the attitude of the students saw the scientific attitude is good.
Scientific attitude of students is higher with mini research patterns in contextual
learning order compared to direct learning, can be understood based on the opinion
of Sears (2002) which states that contextual teaching and learning can helps
learners to make connections between knowledge and its applications to various
contexts of their lives as family members, as citizens and as a workers (Suyanto,
2013) added that with contextual learning, students open opportunities widely to
empower themselves is included in the development of scientific attitude.
Conclusion
Based on the results of the research and the discussion it can be concluded that: (1)
The instrument of student worksheet as a final product in research development is
included in a decent and valid category used to cultivate students' scientific attitude;
and (2) This research trial results obtained that the attitude of the student scientific
higher on the subject matter of microbiology which is for customers to students by
applying mini research pattern in contextual learning order compared to the
application of the mini research in directly learning. The difference of scientific
attitude of the students between the two learning is 25.36%.

565

Proceedings of The 7th Annual International Conference (AIC) Syiah Kuala University and The 6th International
Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (ICMR) in conjunction with the International Conference on Electrical
Engineering and Informatics (ICELTICs) 2017, October 18-20, 2017, Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Acknowledgements
Thank you delivered to the Directorate of Research and Community Service, the
Directorate of Research and Development Ministry for the Research, Technology,
and Higher Education, according to the Research, Contract number: UN/045A
33.8/LL/2017, 5 April 2017.
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