Scientific Research Approach. #Day 4

Assalamualaikum!

Dear readers,

as Psychology students, we cannot run away from Research Methodology since this subject are being applied in every each Psychology's subject. In Educational Psychology, research, training, and experiment are needed in order to have a good teaching method. Meaning, we need to do some research and experiment to compare and invent new methods in teaching. Then, this new methods are put into training and applying into each level of education. This is so much interesting!

So, what is our class activity for today? Come on. Keep on guessing :D

As usual, our instructor, Dr. Lihanna will give us tasks to work on. Today, she gave us two issues for us to come up with some suggestions. 

First issue is regarding ranking PMR 2011 of MRSM in Malaysia in which MRSM Tawau, MRSM Bentong and MRSM Muar were last third in the rank. The question is, how to raise their ranking among other MRSM? After doing some brainstorming, these are some of the results from our group discussion (of course, just random):

• select only best students to enter the school
• mentor and mentee programme for students and teachers
• upgrade teaching method
• upgrade school environment
• emphasize more on subjects with lower CGPA

Second issue is regarding performance of Sekolah Menengah Agama Al-Amin students in Arabic. Their performance in Arabic is so much worrying since they are students from religious school. The expectation is that their performance should be well in Arabic subject. But, what happens is the opposite. The question is, how to increase their performance in Arabic subject? After doing some brainstorming, these are some of the results from our group discussion (of course, just random):

• Intensive classes
• Weekly quizzes
• Arabic week and Arabic camp
• Provide free Arabic dictionary
• Paste Arabic vocabularies around the school

Back to our basic discussion, how to know that all the suggestions that we have mentioned above will work? The answer is simple, through RESEARCH. From research, we will have common sense and will leads to effective results. Okay, there are three types of research that we have learned which are:

1. Descriptive study - observation, measures, survey, interview
2. Correlational study - positive, negative, confound
3. Experimental study - dependent, independent, control, group

Class activity on this day really makes us feel like we are the real psychologists! Research research research.

Before the class end, our instructor had assigned us to find three articles related to the issues that have been discussed above. And each article must represents each type of research above. Reviewing articles is such an "interesting" activity (if you know what we mean). Hehe.

Keep calm and wait for our articles on future updates! Fi amanillah :)