Summary Journal Teaching 2

Djiwandono, Patrisius Istiarto. 2016. CHARACTER EDUCATION IN CONTENT COURSES:

SELF-SCORING AS A MEANS FOR DEVELOPING HONESTY IN STUDENTS. TEFLIN Journal, Vol 27, No. 2, (p:153-165).

The research was about the potential and possible weaknesses of self-scoring technique to shape students’ honesty. Universitas Ma Chung trying hard to provide character education for the students. Previously, from 2007 to 2010 it ran 3 courses for all students under the name Character Building 1, Character Building 2, Character Building 3, and Character Building 4. The first was designed for the students to identify their own weaknesses and strengths. The second was aimed to promote their awareness of God and how they can make a good relationship with God. The third was intended to shape their interpersonal skills, and the last promoted the awareness about healthy environment. The students were put into groups with other fellow students from different majors, and each group was guided by a mentor which the mentor and the groups attended a series of lectures on various topics, and gathered to engage in projects that were aimed to shape their good characters along the major themes mentioned above. Many mentors, who had already been busy with teaching load, research assignments, and other administrative works, some of the mentors were simply overwhelmed by the large number of mentees in the groups they had to supervise. The researcher use a quasi experimental to achieve the objective because there was no control group involved, no randomization, and no pre-test posttest. The study was done in an intact class of 19 students who were taking Language Testing at the English Letters Study Program at Universitas Ma Chung. The course was worth 2 credit hours, which translated into 100-minute session each week. There were 16 sessions, and the assessment was done in the form of 2 Small Quizzes, 3 Major Quizzes, and a final test. The Small Quizzes measured their understanding of the basic concepts of the topics being discussed, the Major Quizzes measure higher cognitive levels of applying and analyzing, and The Final test measured their ability to create a language test. The small quizzes account for 10 percent of the final grade, while the major quizzes and the final examination account for 45 percent of the final grade. The finding of this research was self-assessment may be one of the alternatives to cultivate honesty among students. The conclusion of their scores from three different tests reveals their tendency to be less honest when realizing that the assessment was becoming more of a high-stake test. There are several other ways of instilling honesty with giving reason for tardiness, writing academic papers with proper citation, and peer-assessment are three ways by which educators can cultivate a sense of honesty among their students.