Development of Extracurricular Activities to Enhance Students’ Understanding in Basic Chemistry Concepts

This research aimed to develop extracurricular activities to enhance students’ understanding in concepts of solution concentration and solution dilution for undergraduate chemistry study. The activities comprised small scale chemical laboratory and the practical review session. The research used one-group pretest-posttest design. The participants were first-year students (n=77) and second-year students (n=81) who were later divided into two groups based on their knowledge background according to the pre-test results. According to the analysis of single test item normalized gain and single student normalized gain, students had more improvement in questions that measured understanding level than in application and analysis questions. Although students were able to calculate the molecular weight and know the definition of solution dilution, they still had difficulties in knowledge application. Based on the student questionnaire and reflections, the students in two groups had favorable opinion towards the activities. Most of the students in high-learning-difficulty group thought that the experiment was crucial part that made this extracurricular activities effectively promote understanding in basic chemistry concepts. Meanwhile, most students with the moderate background favored for peer learning.