THE PREFERENCES OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS ON THE LEARNING PROCESS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a serious impact on the socio-economic aspects of society, including the educational aspect. All face-to-face learning activities are changed into online learning including all learning activities in the Department of Biology Education, Siliwangi University. Although having a lack of preparation and experience, online learning must still be carried out as an alternative learning activity during this COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study was conducted to find out the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and students’ learning preferences from the Department of Biology Education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The applied data collection technique was the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) using the Google Form program. Furthermore, the time to fill in the form was conducted from March 21 to April 15, 2020. The population of this study was first-year students of the Department of Biology Education who were enrolling in the Biophysics Course in which the total population was 107 people. Samples were selected by using the purposive sampling technique because the selected samples were not homogeneous based on a gender perspective. The number of samples was 10 respondents. The applied data analysis was the AHP in the form of the geometric mean (geomean) by utilizing the Super Decision program. Moreover, the applied data analysis for analyzing the relationship between criteria was Kendall’s concordance. The results of the analysis indicated that the level of agreement of respondents is strong towards the relationship between criteria. In addition, personal health was the most preferred preference criteria for being applied in the learning process in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic both for the online learning process and for the offline learning process. Therefore, in determining the learning process policy, the researcher suggests prioritizing the health of students.