Journal Resume: ‘The Emergence of a Global Innovation in Education: Diffusing Education for Sustainable Development through Social Networks’

Name: Anis Septianingsih

Class: 4E

NPM: 1910631060066

Journal: ‘The Emergence of a Global Innovation in Education: Diffusing Education for Sustainable Development through Social Networks’ by Nina Kolleck

A Resume

This journal called ‘The Emergence of a Global Innovation in Education: Diffusing Education for Sustainable Development through Social Networks’ written by Nina Kolleck describes how in recent decades, countries around the world have increasingly been confronted with international organizations’ expectations that new innovations be adopted in educational systems. As a consequence, global social innovations such as “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) have been implemented in different educational systems worldwide. Numerous networks have taken shape that pursues the goal of comprehensively embedding the social innovation of ESD in different education sectors such as higher education, and schools of various countries.

Through the context of the United Nations (UN) Decade, ESD has evolved into a globally promoted concept. With the growing relevance of ESD, scholars have increasingly started to analyze the diffusion and transfer of this global educational innovation. However, many scholars have so far mainly studied the implementation of ESD in schools or curricula. At the same time, we still know little about the factual implementation at the national and regional levels. This is surprising because the way ESD is implemented and diffused within UN member countries as well as the role different actors play influences how the concept is understood and realized. The transfer of new educational concepts, in turn, is shaped by the structure of social relations and the interaction of individual actors involved in innovation processes.

Furthermore, in the academic literature it is discussed that social innovations such as ESD are only successful when they are diffused through social relationships and adapted by actors embedded in networks. The chances that a social innovation will be successful increase when it is supported not only by separate individuals but rather by actors interlinked through networks that are built on trustful relationships. In this sense, it is neither exclusively (individual or collective) actors – such as people or organizations – nor only structures that are responsible for the success of social innovations.

Based on the observation that social innovations are implemented through social networks and interactions between those parties involved in innovation processes, this article has implemented Social Network Theory (SNT) and techniques of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to study how ESD is implemented through social relations.

While it is frequently argued that the implementation of the approach takes place through cross-sectorial collaboration, the current study demonstrates a lack of collaboration between people of different activity fields. The concentration of strong sectorial relationships illustrates that the municipal ESD networks tend to group closure, which indicated that individuals who collaborate more with their close neighbors than with persons beyond their own municipality.

Altogether, through successful initiatives, social developments and a strengthening of social networks, the UN Decade of ESD has, over the last decade, led to a wide-ranging implementation and worldwide diffusion of the social innovation ESD. Nevertheless, at the end of the decade and with the beginning of the follow-up world program for action – which envisages a continuation of the UN Decade of ESD in other contexts – both science and practice face big challenges. This is because the anchoring of the concept is still limited to individual, tight-knit working groups. The transfer as well as the trans-national diffusion of the concept has only been achieved to a limited extent. Whereas in recent years, national and international educational and development policy have increasingly referred to ESD, there remains a serious void between political decisions as well as educational plans and the practical implementation of ESD.

The reason why I chose this journal was because we should know and be aware of the emergence of a global innovation in education, and this journal also could be useful for scholars and practitioners in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and social innovation diffusion.

After reading this journal, I can now understand how important the role of social interactions and aspects of power and influence is in implementing social innovations such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and hopefully people who read this article can too.

Journal Resume: ‘Three Dimensions of Learning: Experiential Activity for Engineering Innovation Education and Research’

Name: Anis Septianingsih

Class: 4E

NPM: 1910631060066

Journal: ‘Three Dimensions of Learning: Experiential Activity for Engineering Innovation Education and Research’ by Catherine P. Killen

A Resume

This journal called ‘Three dimensions of learning: Experiential activity for engineering innovation education and research’ written by Catherine P. Killen describes about the engineering education research findings from an experiential class activity that provided three types of learning. The activity was designed to meet the needs of a relatively new and growing theme within engineering education: the management of engineering innovation. The three types of learning are: students’ learning about decision-making frameworks for managing engineering innovation and about the research process; learning about learning - through engineering education research on the effects of experiential activity on learning and retention; and learning from innovation decision research on the effectiveness of the methods used in the activity.

The design of the study, by merging three types of learning into one experiential activity, resulted in a revolutionary approach that can help engineering educators address current challenges. It builds on the ongoing evolutions in engineering education such as increasing experiential and active learning and the use of students to test methods during educational sessions.

The decision task, applied as part of the experiential engineering approaches to engineering innovation education has been a huge success. The first and most important thing is that student learning has been enhanced. Several measures of learning confirm that students have benefitted from the experiential activity. Enjoyment of the activity was high and student perceptions of educational value are statistically supported by the educational research study.

In addition, students received an additional knowledge of learning about the nature of research and the research process. The second success from the decision task is the strength of findings from the educational research study. The study has given clear correlations between experience and increased learning and retention of learning, and provides additional insights on the influence of engagement and interest in a topic. The third success is from the parallel study. The decision task has further expanded the understanding of methods for visualizing data to support project portfolio decision making. This parallel study has produced a series of findings that are reported in other publications and has also provided insights to support the educational study.

The study has implications for engineering education and research. The findings show the effect of experiential activity on learning and give out support for further addition of experiential activity in engineering education. In particular this journal shows how experiential activity can help engineering educators meet the growing need to develop engineering students’ ability to manage technological innovation. Engineering educators and researchers may find inspiration from this example and design a multi-dimensional study using a similar approach. The decision task study provides a very detailed example of experimentation in the classroom and illustrates how it can be designed to be educational and engaging and to collect data for multiple purposes. The study demonstrates how this type of approach can help to address challenges in engineering education by doing more with less. It provides an experiential learning task that is designed for innovation engineering education, generates insights through a simulated experience based on a real-world scenario, engages and educates students, and enables researchers to perform research and generate results for multiple studies at once.

The reason why I chose this journal to be resumed was because the topic of the journal seemed interesting. It provided a brand new method of learning, which is through an experiential activity. As an undergraduate trainee teacher, I also found the journal to be quite useful as it gave me an insight and knowledge about a new teaching approach that could hopefully enhance students’ learning in the future.

After reading this journal I am inspired to try to apply the teaching method hopefully one day, and maybe I could create a similar method with more advantages that can engage and educate students, and enable researches to perform research and help educators address current challenges.

Journal Review : ‘Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Collaborative Learning’

Name: Anis Septianingsih

Class: 4E

NPM: 1910631060066

Journal: ‘Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Collaborative Learning’ by Arliani Gunawan Putri, Arrin Nur Octavialis, and Irma Savitri Sadikin

Journal Review

    A journal titled ‘Improving Students’ Reading Skill through Collaborative Learning’ was created by Arliani Gunawan Putri, Arrin Nur Octavialis, and Irma Savitri Sadikin. In the journal, the researchers try to explain how effective students’ reading skill is after they were instructed by using Collaborative Learning method. In collaborative learning, each member contributes ideas, information, abilities, and skills they have to improve. Besides being able to increase the students’ interest and motivation, it is believed using collaborative or group learning will also develop their thinking skill more creatively.

    To find out whether there is any significant improvement of the students’ reading skill after they were taught by using collaborative learning, the researchers conducted an experiment at SMPN 5 Cimahi by collecting thirty six students from the seventh grade as the sample. The research was conducted in eight meetings. At the first meeting the researchers administered a pre-test. From the second until the seventh meeting, the researchers conducted the treatment in two cycles by using Collaborative Learning. At the last meeting, the researchers administered post-test to find out the students’ improvement in their reading skill after they were taught by using Collaborative Learning.

    According to the result of the experiment in this journal, it was found that the application of learning Learning Together (LT) can improve students’ reading ability and their achievement in the subject matter of public buildings at SMPN 5 Cimahi. The reading skills of the seventh grade students based on the pre-test and post-test after they were taught using Collaborative Learning showed a difference. The highest improvement of students' reading skills is on aspects of understanding and reading.

    This journal does not have many advantages other than to inform the readers about a way that is believed as one of the methods that can improve students’ reading skills. Unlike other creative methods, the researchers decided to use collaborative learning, which in my opinion is very old-fashioned and outdated considering students are very familiar with this method. Students are often assigned to work in groups every now and then, and I am certain they find nothing special about it. Granted collaborative learning could ease them in solving difficult assignments with their peers, but the impact of this method would not be effective to every individual when applied. The main concern is that students can be dependent on the peers whom they consider to be smarter to work on the assignment, while the rest of the students who lack of skill are still struggling and have not improved.

Journal Review: ‘Increasing Writing Skills In Text Based Short Story Through Audio Visual Media’

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Journal : ‘Increasing Writing Skills In Text Based Short Story Through Audio Visual Media’ by Yuhartanti, Novia Juita, Yasnur Asri

Journal Review

            A journal by Yuhartanti, Novia Juita, Yasnur Asri called ‘Increasing Writing Skills In Text Based Short Story Through Audio Visual Media’ attempts to explain how the use of audio-visual media can be used to study the interaction of children and for them to absorb knowledge through what is seen and heard in. Audio-visual is used as one of the tools to reach a specific audience in a special role for the sake of achieving certain goals, in this case to improve students’ writing skills. Media teaching can heighten students' learning process which can in turn heighten the learning outcomes.

            To further find out whether audio-visual media can be effective in increasing students’ writing skills in text based short story, Yuhartanti, Novia Juita, and Yasnur Asri conducted an experiment at SMAN 1 Batang Anai in Padang. They chose a classroom action research as their method because it has characteristics that correspond to the research objectives, namely to increase the skill of writing short stories from the folklore texts through the application of audio visual media, and they chose a class of tenth graders majoring in social studies as their participant.

            The result of the research shows that the use of audio-visual media can increase the students’ writing skill. It also increases the activity of the students because the teacher is able to create a good atmosphere of learning so that it can result a positive attitude and self-confidence of students. At the time of learning, teachers have facilitated a series of activities that give the space for the emergence of student activity. The number of students who reach to KKM set with that achievement is 75%.

            There are not many advantages to this journal besides the audio-visual method that the researchers had proposed turned out to be successful in increasing the students’ skill in writing. Other than that, I would say that this journal was not thoroughly researched. The participants of this experiment were not that much either, with that kind of method the researchers should not have just picked one class, they could have at least picked two classes to represent the entire students. Their choice of words and diction in this journal were also very poor, they should have double checked the journal before releasing it. Otherwise, the readers will find difficulties in reading and understanding the content of the journal, and the main purpose of releasing it will be vain.

Journal Review: ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Journal : ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’ by Retta Mestika Ompusunggu

Journal Review

In a country where English is considered as a foreign language, such as in Indonesia, learning and practicing it can be a difficult thing to do. In her journal called ‘The Effectiveness of Short Story Use on Students’ Speaking Skill Development’, Retta Mestika Ompusunggu tries to explain how using short stories in the EFL classroom can expose learners to distinctive opportunities for educational, intellectual, cultural and linguistic development. Short story is considered as one of the literary genres that can be used in the EFL classroom to enhance language skill, motivate students, and increase their cultural awareness and tolerance.

To further find out whether short stories use can be effective to develop students’ skill in English as a foreign language (EFL) context, Retta Mestika Ompusunggu conducted a pretest-posttest experiment design using two groups of experimental and control at SMPN 160 Jakarta. The experimental group was taught speaking using short stories, while the control group was taught speaking in the routine procedure of the English classes. The experiment occurred in six weeks, two forty-five-minutes-sessions per week. The data was collected using tests administering the interview technique. The results of the hypothesis test demonstrated that short story use had a significant effect on the participants' speaking skills improvement. Therefore, it was recommended to use short story to help students develop their speaking performance.

The journal has many advantages, one of them is that the researcher chose an interesting and simple topic for her research, and it seems that her method of using short stories to improve students’ speaking skill can be very easy to apply. Moreover, based on the result of her study it showed that the use of the method turned out to have a significant effect on the students, since the primary function of short stories is to entertain and inform, they keep interest alive in the classroom and motivate students, they have factual (real) and cultural values. In other words, short stories create a comfortable atmosphere and a good and enjoyable environment so that students become more interested in classroom participation.

However, the journal also has its weaknesses. First, this study focused only on the effect of the use of short story on students' speaking performance. Consequently, attitudinal factors of the students were not identified. As a consequence, there might be extraneous factors that affected the samples homogeneity. Finally, the experiment in this study was conducted only in twelve sessions using six short stories. Conducting studies with a greater number of short stories in a longer period of time in the future might produce a more valid result.

Journal Review: 'Using Short Story to Improve Student’s Reading Comprehension’

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Journal : ‘Using Short Story to Improve Student’s Reading Comprehension’ by Amelia Eka Frimasary

Journal Review

A journal by Amelia Eka Frimasary called ‘Using Short Story to Improve Student’s Reading Comprehension’ attempts to explain a problem caused by the unwillingness in reading and the need to achieve a success in English among Indonesian junior high school students. As we all know, English is considered as foreign language in Indonesia. That is why Indonesian students find difficulties in learning English. There is no way for them to adapt themselves in this era except by learning English. 

The success of someone in learning is often supported by their willingness to read a lot. A person's interest in reading is very important for improving their achievement, because if they do not have interest in it, then they will not even have the motivation to read. It is as if they want to improve their English, but they are not really willing to read English. They consider English is difficult to learn before even trying to learn it. 

Therefore, Amelia Eka Frimasary in her journal conducted an experiment in SMPN 2 Bengkulu by introducing a new way to encourage the reading willingness in students using short story. The reason is because in teenagers' level, short story is the most interested literary work to read. It is not too long to read and has various interesting topics. So hopefully through this way, they can improve their comprehension in reading without boredom.

  To find out the differences in students’ score and also to know whether their interest was improved or not after the use of short story and handbook, the researcher did an experiment using questionnaire method. The result was satisfactory. It was found that short story can improve reading comprehension of the students and it made them feel interested and encouraged read English texts. The method was successful to increase the score of the students.

This journal has many advantages, one of them is that the researcher chose an interesting topic for her research, and she made her work easy to read by all people. The result of her research also turned out to be successful. The researcher kept the conclusion brief but clear, and she also enclosed very useful rational suggestions at the end of her paper.

Though this journal also has its weaknesses, such as the researcher only elected forty students to fulfill her questionnaire for the experiment while there were more than nine classes existed for second year students in SMPN 2 Bengkulu. So, the result of the experiment might not be able to represent all the opinions of the students.

Tips on How to Read Scientific Articles Easily

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Critical Reading

How to Read Scientific Articles Easily

Entering the world of lectures, the source of learning material is more varied than during high school. In high school we learned more from textbooks, teacher explanations, and the internet. In college we would often face scientific journals. Reading scientific journals is a regular activity for college students. When there are assignments, lecturers relatively more often ask students to look for sources from scientific journals. Compared to textbooks, scientific journals are more appropriate as references because usually the research is more updated. So, in conclusion, reading scientific journals is mandatory for college students.

For those of you who are struggling with assignments and stacks of scientific articles or journals, follow these simple tips for reading and understanding scientific articles or journals:

1. Start reading from the Introduction, not the Abstract.

Abstract contains a brief description / summary of the entire contents of the journal. In the abstract alludes to the background, methods, results, and conclusions of the journal. However, sometimes the abstract content does not explain the contents of the journal. So, so that you don't just quote, first understand the research background that is listed in the opening chapter.

2. Find the big question

What's important isn't "what is research about?" but "what, is the problem of this research that you want to solve?". If you start from that question, you will be more focused when reading scientific journals. The purpose of research is to solve a problem, right? From this big question, later you will better understand why this research should be done.

3. Make a summary from the background, not more than five sentences

The introduction section contains some important things such as what previous research has been done, the importance of doing this research, and what further research should be done. So, try to make a summary of this information. If you know the basic flow of research thinking from a scientific journal, you will also find it easier to understand the whole content.

4. Create a diagram or workflow from the methods section

The content of the method is the steps the researcher takes to answer the problem of his research. In the method, the researcher will tell the method used. For experimental research, for example, of course the tools, materials, and treatments given to the object are included.

5. Read the results section

After reading the results section, you can summarize it. No need to try to conclude the content of the results, really. It is enough to write down what is the result of the research. And actually, you can see the contents of the results through existing charts and tables. There are several pieces of information that you should pay attention to when reading the results section. For example, regarding the significance and insignificance of the results. In addition, the sample size used must also be considered. Is the sample used sufficiently representative?

6. See the conclusion

A good conclusion is one that answers the heart of the problem. For example, there is research on the effect of the duration of social media use on adolescents on academic achievement. The conclusion section must answer whether there is a relationship between social media and achievement. Even if a relationship is found, it must be clarified whether it is significant (significant) or not.

7. Refer to the Abstract section to confirm your understanding of the entire journal

If you have read the sections of the journal in sequence from the opening, the method, the results, to the conclusion, this is the time for you to start reading the abstract section. Actually, this is to double-check whether what you caught from the journal is appropriate or not. If you find that something is wrong, you can reread the part that is still misunderstood.

Disclaimer: All pictures were taken from Pinterest.

Journal Review: ‘Rethinking the Objectives of Teaching English in Asia’

Name : Anis Septianingsih

Class : 4E

NPM : 1910631060066

Journal : ‘Rethinking the Objectives of Teaching English in Asia’ by Z. N. Patil

Journal Review

            A journal by Z. N. Patil called ‘Rethinking the Objectives of Teaching English in Asia’ attempts to explain how there is an urgent need to rethink the objectives of teaching English as a second and foreign language, and how it is imperative to place confidence building, fluency and appropriateness before accuracy, and narrates the author’s personal views on this issue.

            Most students in some Asian countries are diffident when it comes to using English. The biggest challenge for a teacher of English in such countries is to help students overcome shyness, inhibitions and nervousness. As we know, in Asian countries English is either a foreign language or a second language. Families do not speak English at home; employees do not use English in the office, at the station, at the post office, and even at the airport, etc. The only place where English has some privilege is the English classroom. And even there teachers and students use their native language quite extensively.

            The advantage of this journal is that Z. N. Patil highlighted a few important issues and priorities on how to enable the students to use English confidently, appropriately and accurately. He also provided his own respective standardized varieties of English as models for teaching and testing purposes should not be hard because many of us are in influential decision-making positions, and we are responsible for syllabus designing, materials production, teaching and evaluation.

            Though there is also a drawback in this journal, it seems that the author, Z. N. Patil wrote this journal mostly based on his experience of teaching English in Asia so far. There is less data to support his statements, so we do not know for sure if his suggestions or recommendations will work for the majority of English teachers.