Analytical Separation Method: A Student’s Perception on Analogy-based Teaching for Terminology

Abstract

Analytical Separation Method is a chemistry course offered at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia. This course covers the application of chromatographic techniques, whereby students must be able to describe the principles and terminologies used and relate them with suitable analogies. A strong understanding of this course plays a major role in the development of solid knowledge amongst graduates to survive in the job market. An auspicious method to understand the analytical separation method has not been identified so far, therefore, limits their opportunities for career development in the future. According to the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) method, teachers must first understand the knowledge before presenting the information to students during the teaching process. If we can recognise this concept clearly, efforts towards the teaching of science will lead to a new achievement. Analogy-based teaching was found to be capable of increasing students' understanding with regards to the subject matter. The present research successfully identified the level of understanding towards terminology and analogy along with the readiness of students to use an alternative teaching method across campuses, and the readiness concerning the usage of different interactive teaching tools. Quantitative measurement was conducted via SPSS using a sample of 128 students from four different campuses. Based on the analysis, most of the students faced difficulties in accurately translating and relating to the terminologies (57.8%) and analogies (55.5%) concerning the theories without proper guidance. According to the overall mean score (4.18), the range of positive agreement signified the student’s readiness towards the usage of interactive tools during teaching and learning sessions. There was no significant difference in students’ level of understanding on analogy across campuses, however, a significant difference was found in students’ level of understanding on terminologies used across campuses. In pairwise comparisons, there was a statistically significant difference (p-value = 0.009 < 0.05) between Kuala Pilah (K) and Arau (A) campuses.