Edmodo in Vocabulary Class and Its Character Building Effect
Siti Mafulah
English Education Department, Universitas Kanjuruhan Malang, Jl. S.Supriadi 48 Malang, Jawa Timur, Indonesia
Keywords: Edmodo, character building, vocabulary.
Abstract: Character building is important thing to be integrated in the course. The aims of the study were to know
how the use of edmodo in Vocabulary class and its character building impact on the second semester
university students. Classroom action research was applied in this research, with 45 students as the
participants. Test, observation and questionnaire were used in gathering the data. The result shows that
through edmodo, students are not only improving their awareness in learning but also having character
building awareness. It can be seen from the questionnaire and observation sheet, in academic achievement
students understand, they are motivated learning using edmodo, they enthusiast when learning vocabulary
and in character building aspect, their discipline, responsibility and communicative rose when they did all
the assignment and quizzes from the lecturer.
1 INTRODUCTION
Teaching is not as a simple as giving or sharing
knowledge to the students. It is not only purely
teaching but also building their character to be better
people in the society. In the education system
sometimes it is integrated with the topic and media
used to insert the character value. Teachers should
feel confident in giving character building to the
student when they teach material in class, so
character education can be prioritized. Furthermore
building character education should be known from
the teacher competencies before teaching them to the
students (Ülger, Yiğittir, and Ercan, 2014).
Character refers to a set of knowledge or
cognitive, attitudes, and motivations, behaviour,
skills (Kamaruddin, 2012) feeling, believe and
action (Rokhman, Hum, Syaifudin, and Yuliati,
2014), it means that someone character cannot be
seen from one aspect only but we can see someone
character from the integration of those aspects
mentioned. If someone wants to change certain
character, he/she have to know his/her basic
character’s element. Character can be taught since
students from early childhood (Ferdiawan and Putra,
2013; Mei-Ju, Chen-Hsin, and Pin-Chen, 2014a;
Şahinkayasi and Kelleci, 2013) up to higher
education (Lidyasari, 2014)
There are several studies related to the use of
edmodo and character building. Such as edmodo in
the vocabulary mastery (Evenddy and Hamer, 2016),
attitude toward learning (Estrada-Vidal and Tójar-
Hurtado, 2017; Okaz, 2015), edmodo in online
learning community (Ekici, 2017)
Character education such as caring, citizenship,
fairness, respect, honest, discipline, responsibility
and trustworthiness should be built in the teaching
learning process. In detail, based on Indonesian
ministry of Education, the characters that can be
integrated in a subject are: first, religious. It means
that attitude and behavior should embedded in class
teaching learning process such as tolerant and live in
harmony with other religions. Second is honest,
someone can be called honest if their speaking is
same with what they think and their action. Third is
tolerance to diversity, it means that students should
respect other religion, race, ethnicity, opinion,
attitudes and action which are different from
themselves. Fourth is discipline, in this aspect
someone should obey the rules and regulations. Fifth
is hard work, measures indicating orderly behavior
and fulfill with various rules and regulations. Sixth
character is creative, thinking of new thing and
doing something to generate a new way.
Independent is the next aspect, it can be showed
from the students behavior in doing such kind of
task themselves not depend on others. Democratic is
how to think, behave, and act the same right.
Curiosity is the attitudes and action as attempting to
determine the depth and spread something that
learner seen and heard. The spirit of nationality and
love homeland are how students put the national
348
Mafulah, S.
Edmodo in Vocabulary Class and Its Character Building Effect.
In Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities (ANCOSH 2018) - Revitalization of Local Wisdom in Global and Competitive Era, pages 348-352
ISBN: 978-989-758-343-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

interest above their interest. Rewarding achievement
means that attitudes and actions that encourage
students to produce something useful to other and
society recognize and respect other success.
Friendly/communicative is the next aspect,
students should be friendly with other and no
differentiate between one to another. Love peace,
means that student should love peace, no longer
fight for simple everything. Joy of reading, it means
that students are expected to love reading various
reading text not only at school but also at any
occasion. Environment concern, attitude and action
in loving environment, prevent it and have several
efforts to make environment repaired from some
damage. Social concern means that students should
aware of societal condition. They have to be active
and sensitive of everything happen in their
community. The last character education that should
be integrated in a lesson is responsibility. It means
that students should have to responsible to every job
or task given by teacher/lecturer. Through all
character mentions above, it can be derived that the
character that is built at school can be applied in
student’s daily life.
Based on the character education,
teacher/lecturer should creative in using media and
tool in teaching process to integrate the character
education in a lesson given. Technology teaches us
to have several characters, teacher/lecturer have
motivation in using online technology (Mohamad,
Salleh, and Salam, 2015) such as edmodo
(Balasubramanian, Jaykumar, and Fukey, 2014;
Purnawarman, Susilawati, and Sundayana, 2016)
Edmodo is one of the free educational learning
platforms to provide a simple way for teacher to
create and manage an online classroom community.
It also enables students to connect and work with
their classmate’s teacher anywhere and anytime.
There are some advantages of edmodo, such as
make students more discipline, responsible (Eliasa,
2014) . There are some features in edmodo for
example quiz, assignment, polling and other that
make teacher can manage the task easily.
In this paper, the writer want to depict how
edmodo can raise students’ character building and
what are students responses toward edmodo as
media of teaching learning.
2 METHOD
2.1 Participants and Research Design
Participants in this research were 45 students of the
second semester with range of age between 18-19
years old.
To answer how edmodo can raise students’
character building and what are the students’
responses toward edmodo as media of teaching
learning, researcher applied edmodo in vocabulary
class for seven weeks. Researcher gave assignment
and observed students attitude toward their work.
The researcher not only analyzed the academic
aspect but also analyzed education characters which
is raised, namely, discipline, responsibility and
communicative.
2.2 Instrument and Data Analysis
The instruments used in this research were test,
observation and questionnaires. Test is given to the
students to know the students achievement.
Observation was to observe the students’ character
education building along the material given to the
students. This research done in vocabulary class
along one semester, so that lecturer also can identify
the kinds of character education raised through
edmodo as media of teaching learning.
After observing the running of the class activity,
the researcher gave the questionnaires to the students
to know their responses toward the use of edmodo in
vocabulary class and to ensure the character
education they got from the using of edmodo in
teaching learning process.
The process of data collection were the
researcher asked the students to use edmodo as
media, gave assignment to do and observe how
many students obey the rules, then researcher
discuss the material in edmodo while ensuring who
are active in the discussion. Using observation
checklist, researcher checked the students work and
respond.
The questionnaires were given after the end of
the class. It is done to know students responses of
the class running and character education they have
got from the use of edmodo. The questionnaires
consisted of two question aspects, first is about what
they get from the use of edmodo and the second is
about their responses towards the use of it in class.
After getting the data then the researcher analyse
the data through making percentage to know the
students responses and using table to know what
kinds of character arose.
Edmodo in Vocabulary Class and Its Character Building Effect
349

The application of edmodo given in seven
meetings and researcher analysed each week when
she gave such assignment or material on edmodo or
discussing some materials there.
3 RESULTS
The result of the research described as follows:
3.1 How Edmodo Can Raise Students’
Character Education Building
The researcher tried to identify students’ character
through the application of edmodo in vocabulary
class. The researcher came to vocabulary class and
asked them whether they have edmodo account or
not and asked them to make an account and joined
the vocabulary class. There are several assumptions
when edmodo applied in the class for the first time.
Some students didn’t join although the researcher
gave them time to join. Another assumption is they
think that edmodo is not important for them because
they still learn in class.
From the first week the researcher gave material
to be learnt before they come to the class for the next
week. On the second week, only 5 students asked
about the task, the rest didn’t say anything. They still
didn’t understand with the rules given. On the
following week they had understood that they had to
communicate or ask if there any misunderstanding
definition or the use of such word.
Students’ character building is not merely
changes their looks. Character should be embedded
in teaching learning process since the early age
(Lidyasari, 2014; Mei-Ju, Chen-Hsin, and Pin-Chen,
2014b; Silanoi, 2012). The effect of edmodo in
Vocabulary class on character building can be seen
from the development of their attitude in doing their
task, submitting the task and their way in
communicating or discussing the material in class.
Characters which are raised from the use of
edmodo can be seen from the figure 1.
0 10 20 30 40 50
week 1
week 2
week 3
week 4
week 5
week 6
week 7
wee
k 1
wee
k 2
wee
k 3
wee
k 4
wee
k 5
wee
k 6
wee
k 7
communicative
3 5 7 10 16 18 20
responsibility
7 15 22 33 40 45 45
discipline
5 10 20 33 40 45 45
communicative responsibility discipline
Figure 1: Students’ character education using edmodo as
tool of teaching learning.
Figure 1 tells us that the amount of the students from
week to week arise in showing their character
education building. The effect such as discipline,
responsibility and communicative will be discuss in
the following detail:
3.1.1 Discipline
There some differences between students who have
discipline in doing task in week 1 and in week 2.
The amount from 5 students into 10 students, it
means that more students aware of their discipline in
doing their task. From week 2 to week 3 also shows
increased amount of the students who done the task
on time. From the chart we can conclude that on
week 5 almost all students (40 students from the
total 45 students) are doing their task punctually.
Through edmodo in the sixth and seventh week, all
students do their tasks and assignments on time.
Discipline is considered as one of character
education that should be given to the students for all
their life long (Estrada-Vidal and Tójar-Hurtado,
2017). Discipline will be applied in the workplace
when they graduated from school or university, they
will feel comfort in their environment (Pane and
Patriana, 2016). Students will have good habit in
their daily life. They do their task on time. The
development of discipline needs longer time to make
sense of it.
3.1.2 Responsibility
For responsibility aspect, it is also the same with
discipline aspect. Some students actually do their
ANCOSH 2018 - Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities
350

task but they submit it not on the time given and it
was rejected by the system. From week to week
showed their responsibility raised. It can be seen
from the fourth week, the amount of the students
who did and submitted the task on time were in
same amount. It means that students who do the
task, they also submit on time. The amount of the
students are 33 (73%) who showed their
responsibility in doing their task. The responsibility
is fully done by all of the students in the sixth and
seventh meeting as their discipline character in
doing and submitting the task.
Responsible is one of the character educations
that need awareness of someone to do something
properly. Responsible can be applied both individual
(Saxon, 2013) and on teamwork (Eliasa, 2014).
3.1.3 Communicative
Different to the two character mentioned above,
communicative has the lowest achievement.
Although it increases from week to week but the
amount of the students still not all participate in the
discussion. They are only silent when they got
material, they did their task and assignment but they
only read the discussion without giving some
comments. It can be seen from the table 1 that in
the seventh week only 20 students who actively
discuss in edmodo. It means that their confident in
giving their opinion and they still shy to discuss.
Perhaps it can be caused by their experience in
speaking while they are still in the second semester.
Students can be called communicative if they do not
shy in showing their aspiration, their feelings.
Edmodo can increase students effective
communication (Al-Said, 2015)
3.2 Students Responses toward the
using Of Edmodo
After giving seven meeting using edmodo, the
researcher gave questionnaire to the students to
know their responses toward the implementation of
this online application. There are several questions
given to the students in accordance with the use of
edmodo in vocabulary class. The result of the
questionnaires is in table 1.
Table 1: Students’ responses toward the using of edmodo.
statement
yes
no
1. Using edmodo is easy
2. I can increase my vocabulary
using edmodo as media
80%
20%
77%
23%
3. I understand well the material
given on edmodo
80%
20%
4. By using edmodo I feel more
confident to discuss
everything to the lecturer
67%
33%
5. I am more discipline when
doing assignment
90%
10%
6. I am more responsible with all
the task given
7. I always see the due date
given so that I am not late in
submitting the task
83%
80%
17%
20%
8. I am really motivated to learn
vocabulary by using edmodo
as media
93%
7%
There are several aspects gathered from table 1.
First is in term of the using of edmodo itself. Using
edmodo is easy (80% students said it). Second, It
can increase students’ academic achievement in
learning vocabulary (77% said that using edmodo
can increase their vocabulary, 80% said that they
understand the material well). It can be seen from
the result of the test. It showed that by using edmodo
their vocabulary mastery increase. It can be seen
from 50% students got under 75 in doing first task
become 75 % students got above 75. It means that
there are 25% increase of the amount of the students
when they did the second task.
Third, in term of character (discipline got 90%
responses of being discipline by using edmodo in
vocabulary class, responsible got 83% good respond
from students, and communicative/they feel more
confident to discuss everything with the lecturer).
The last is in term of motivation. 80% of the total
students said that they are motivated in learning
vocabulary using edmodo.
From the responses above there are some positive
aspect gained from the application of technology
such as edmodo at class activities.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Character education should be integrated among the
lesson given to the students. From the result above,
it can be seen that building character is not as easy
as open our eyes. It needs time to make the students
aware of their character building awareness.it can be
Edmodo in Vocabulary Class and Its Character Building Effect
351

concluded that edmodo can increase students
achievement in learning process. It also gives
contribution to the development of students’
character such as discipline, responsible and
communicative.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writer thanks to Universitas Kanjuruhan Malang
that gives support so that this article published
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