Enhancing Students' High-Order Thinking Skills through STEM-Blended Learning on Kepler's Law During Covid-19 Outbreak

This study aimed to examines the effectiveness of the implementation of STEM-Blended learning to enhance high school students' high-level thinking skills on Kepler law concept during covid-19 outbreak. The method used in this study is a quasi-experimental method. This study used two class groups including the experimental class and the control class. This study was conducted at one of high schools in Indonesia. The students' higher-order thinking skills for the experimental class was included in the medium category with a percentage of achievement of 75%. However, in the control class, it was included in the medium category with a rate of 61%. The results showed that there were significant differences between experimental and control classes with the value .0015 < 0.05, meaning that the implementation of STEM-Blended learning is effective to enhance high school students' high-level thinking skills on Kepler law concept. This findings will be usefull for the development of STEM Education during Covid-19 outbreak.


INTRODUCTION
Through technological help, the covid-19 pandemic given an insight of the future continuation of the field of education (Etika, 2020). However, technology will never be able to replace instructors' roles or learning exchanges between students and teachers since education is about gaining information and values, cooperating, and being competent (Rahiem, 2020). This pandemic scenario is a measure for every person's inventiveness in using technology to advance the educational process (Mulyanti, 2020).
With Indonesia's scenario, which includes hundreds of islands, online learning is a problem for the globe of education (Putri, 2020). Technology may be utilized to give internet connection in distant places where technological items are still considered a luxury without access to the internet (Hidayati, 2020).
Access to the internet is a difficulty for all parties. At this moment, we should try harder to introduce techniques to solve the genuine challenges that teachers and students who are less privileged in terms of funding and technology face in distant places face (Kusumawati, 2020;Taufik, 2020).
During the Covid-19 pandemic, there are indeed many different things that are happening in this life. One of these changes occurs in education, where learning activities must be carried out online or online (Amir, 2020;Mailizar, 2020). Indonesia itself, which is also affected by the coronavirus outbreak, inevitably has to carry out education online (Nisa, 2020). Unfortunately, in this online learning, there are many obstacles or problems. Indonesia's initial educational challenge during the epidemic was a lack of preparedness in terms of educational infrastructure (Siron, 2020). Jurnal Penelitian dan Pembelajaran IPA Haryadi, et al Vol. 7, No. 2, 2021, p. 168-192 170 Serious issues might also emerge throughout the online learning process.
Because online learning does not need students to interact in person in class, the teacher's explanation will be less effective (Huang, 2020 (Pool and Byatt, 1996) The focus is on providing authentic materials and guidelines (Shu, 2018).
The multimedia position in blended learning is not a goal but a way to achieve goals to facilitate learning, which is difficult when delivered directly (Philipsen, 2019 (Green, 2018). In Blended Learning, six elements must be present, namely: (1) face-to-face (2) independent learning, (3) application, (4) tutorials, (5) cooperation, and (6) evaluation. In addition to the six elements above, blended learning as a learning method also has its characteristics (Ghazal, 2018;Leite, 2018;Popovic, 2018 HOTS is thinking at a higher level than remembering facts, repeating facts, or applying rules/formulas/procedures (Singh, 2020 for further processing (Sinta, 2020).
From that information, possible answers are sought that can solve a problem in that situation. Therefore, high order thinking skill (HOTS) will occur when someone can find viable solutions to questions based on the processing of new information obtained with the knowledge or story that has been received. Of course, the data obtained is processed and needs to be developed to get an excellent conclusion to solve the problems.
Based on the HOTS approach and understanding, it can be concluded that the HOTS approach is an essential learning process that requires students to be able to process their knowledge with new information to find solutions to the problems given (Saritepeci, 2019). The HOTS approach can make students think more creatively and critically. Through this approach, students will play an active role in finding new information from various sources. The teacher acts as a facilitator who helps students to be able to process data to draw conclusions or solutions to the problems given finally.
The HOTS approach is an innovation in education to require students to take an active role in classroom learning.
Learning using the HOTS approach will help students be more independent and confident in solving a given problem (Carroll, 2020;Dewi, 2020). This is because students will seek and process information according to their respective abilities.
The criteria in learning using the HOTS Analyze An analysis is a technique to distinguish, organize data to look for relationships between one data and another and interpret its meaning. In the analyzing stage, students will learn to analyze a given problem. From this understanding, it can be seen that three elements make up the analysis, namely differentiating, organizing, and attributing. a. Differentiating Distinguishing occurs when students can sort data into relevant data to less relevant data. The goal is to sort data that can be used as problem solvers or data supporting information in concluding. b. Organizing Organizing is grouping related data. Also, these data can function together in one structure. In organizing, students must be able to distinguish the relationship from the data that has been collected. c. Attributing Data that has been organized will be underlined by the parts that are the core of the problems given. At this stage, students will find the essence of the question for which a solution will be sought. 2 Evaluate Evaluating is checking the solution obtained. By assessing, students can criticize the answer to a problem. There are two aspects contained in the evaluation, namely reviewing and critiquing. a. Checking When the results have been obtained, students will doublecheck the consistency of the products. Apart from checking the results, students can also check the complete process's effectiveness to get more consistent and effective results. b. Critiquing Criticism occurs when students find inconsistent results. Also, students can criticize the process that is less efficient in drawing a solution to a problem. 3 Create Creating is compiling the information obtained to collect a completion plan whose goal is to get results. The results obtained are the actual results, not the works of estimates or provisional hypotheses. In this stage, students are led to be able to find a solution to the problem. Also, students can explain the cause and effect of the situation given. The essential aspects of creation are generating, planning, and producing. a. Generating The solution to be taken is a composition of the previously obtained hypotheses. Information and assumptions are compiled to find the final answer to a given problem. b. Planning Planning functions to determine the ways or steps to be taken to find a solution. Students will decide for themselves the steps that will be used to solve the given problem. The goal is to make it easier for students to find solutions. c. Producing At this stage, students will create a product based on the results that have been given. Of course, the resulting product must match the description of the results provided. In this final stage, students can explain in detail and a structured manner about the problems' causes and effects. Detailed research procedures are shown in Figure 1. Moreover, the stages in the STEM-blended learning process can be shown in Figure 2 and the steps for using blended learning can be seen in Figure 3.

N-Gain
This analysis is used to see the difference in higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) in the experimental and control classes. Evaluate from the increase in the score of each student between the pretest and post-test. This data is called the gain, following the n-gain formula (Hake, 1998). The interpretation of N-gain is presented in Table 2.

T-test
The

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Data on the results of the pretest and post-test
Based on the implementation, The data of the pre-test and post-test were can be seen in Table 3. Moreover, the normality of the pre-test and post-test were can be seen in Table 4 and the homogenity of the pre-test and post-test were can be seen in Table 5.
Additionally, N-Gain is can be seen in Tabel 6.  Table 4 shows the value <0.05, which means the data above is not normally distributed. Table 5 shows the significance <0.05, which means that the Hypothesis H₁ in this study is accepted.  After following the post-test, it appears that they know the very general description of Kepler's Law. They know who discovered it but cannot explain the history of the invention and the concept.
After following the post-test, it appears that an understanding of the The N-gain assessment in Table 6 shows the difference in achievement improvement. The experimental class is included in the medium category, and the control class is included in the low sort.  (Sulaeman et al., 2021).
The implementation of STEM schooling may be a cause for renewal withinside the global of schooling (Farwati et al., 2021).