Designing a Study Orientation Skills Kit to Improve Academic Performance of Form Five Secondary School Students

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop study orientation strategic tools towards achieving academic excellence among form five arts stream (O’Levels)Mat Kilau Secondary School (SMK Mat Kilau) students in Kuantan, Malaysia.  The measurement of study orientation skills is done by innovating a website based on a survey of study habits and attitudes questionnaire (SSHA); http://kemahiranbelajar.ump.edu.my .  The students’ study orientation skills are analyzed and sorted into three groups of achievement; the higher achiever, normal achiever and lower achiever. The strategic tools comprise of the treatment website; http://survey.ump.edu.my/admin. , subject modules, Ghani format of note-taking, DVD on the selected of SPM subjects.  The assessment on the academic performance is based on grade point average (GPA) scores of the students in their first term and second term examination results.  23 respondents were selected by simple random sample taken from the SMK Mat Kilau arts stream students. The research uses Quasi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test by comparing both group samples.  The finding has shown that the study orientation skills (SOS) website was able to measure SOS effectively among the respondents in the two groups.  There is a significant difference in SOS between pre-test and post test scores of the respondents. In addition, it was also found that through the introduction of biofeedback techniques, students were able to increase their heart rate coherence which leads to improvement in their learning ability. The results also show that there is a correlation between SOS and GPA scores in pre-test and post-test within and between each group.

Keywords: study orientation, study habits, attitude, academic excellence ,bio feedback  performance