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

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 essays 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 Pharmacy Program of STIKES Borneo Lestari Banjarbaru