Soft Skill Assessment Development in Basic Electrical Engineering

Activities of Vocational High School

Hantje Ponto, Parabelem Tinno Dolf Rompas, and Rudy Sanger

Universitas Negeri Manado

Keywords: Soft Skill, Assessment Development, Basic Electrical Engineering, SMK

Abstract: Vocational high school (SMK) conducts learning activities to educate skilled workers able to work in the

business and industry. The learning process in SMK, teachers educate and teach about the subject matter of

theory and practice. Soft skill is an important aspect to practice activities in accordance with the objectives.

Pre-survey shows SMK teachers do not have assessment instruments yet. The specific objective of the study

was to develop an observational assessment in practice on the basic electrical engineering subjects of students

at SMK. The research method has used research and development of ADDIE models. It was found that the

basic electrical engineering practice assessment developed satisfied the validity, feasible and practical

requirements used to assess the soft skills of students in basic electrical engineering practice.

1 INTRODUCTION

Vocational education schools (Vocational Schools)

are formal educational institutions that organize

secondary education in the implementation of the

process of learning more practical activities

specifically educating prospective skilled workers.

Vocational Schools are being developed in Indonesia

to prepare someone to be better able to work in a

particular field of work. Vocational or vocational

education aims to meet people's needs regarding

labour (Evans, 1978). This explanation is in line as

described by Pavlova (2009) that vocational

education and training activities are a process to

prepare students who have skills, skills,

understanding, attitude, work habits, and appreciation

of the jobs needed by the community and the business

community. or the industry is supervised by the

community and government.

Based on this explanation, students are expected

to have skills and skills called hard skills while

attitude behaviours, work habits and appreciation are

forms of soft skills. UGM Vocational School (SV)

Alumni (2016) said the world of work believes that

superior human resources (HR) do not only have hard

skill skills but are also skilled in the soft skills aspect.

The results of research at Harvard University in the

United States turned out to be a person's success is not

determined solely by knowledge and technical skills

or hard skills alone, but more by the ability to manage

themselves and others (soft skills). This study reveals,

success is only determined around 20% by hard skills

and the remaining 80% by soft skills. Workers who

have soft skills are needed in the industrial world

(Widarto, Pardjono, and Widodo, 2012). It is a reality

that education in Indonesia provides a greater portion

of hard skill content, and can even be said to be more

oriented towards hard skill learning. Then how big

should the soft skill load be in the education

curriculum? Actually the determinant of one's success

is more due to the soft skill element. Soft skills

determine a person's success in carrying out an

activity (Herson & Wirda, 2012; Tang, 2018;

Pachauri and Yadav, 2014). In addition to soft skill

technical skills are important factors for various

organizations (Robles, 2012; Ilias, Razak, Yunus,

Rasak, 2012). Many industry and service companies

are disappointed because their workforce is not

adequate (Taylor, 2016).

Sutrisno (2016) said that students as subjects and

at the same time education products are required to

have eight basic competencies, namely (1)

communication skills; (2) critical and creative

thinking; (3) inquiry / reasoning skills; (3)

interpersonal skills; (5) multicultural / multilingual

literacy; (6) problem solving; (7) information / digital

literacy; and (8) technological skills. Of the eight

competencies 1-6 are soft skills while 7 and 8 are hard

Ponto, H., Rompas, P. and Sanger, R.

Soft Skill Assessment Development in Basic Electrical Engineering Activities of Vocational High School.

DOI: 10.5220/0009013304710475

In Proceedings of the 7th Engineering International Conference on Education, Concept and Application on Green Technology (EIC 2018), pages 471-475

ISBN: 978-989-758-411-4

471

skills. According to Pramuniati (2013), a teaching

imbalance that focuses more on hard skills than soft

skills is a serious problem for the world of education

that needs to be addressed immediately.

The learning process in Vocational High School is

very important to master theory and practice so that

students' behaviour about soft skills needs to change

their behaviour as explained by (Fayadi, 2012)

learning is a process to change one's behaviour in

learning activities.

In order for DTL practice activities in vocational

schools to produce maximum learning and training

processes, students must have soft skills that can be

measured for information to formative evaluation in

DTL practice activities. Formative evaluation has the

goal that it can be known that it has arrived where it

has been formed according to the teaching objectives

within a certain period of time after participating in

learning activities within a certain period of time

(Sudjana, 2017). Next Silverius (1991) said formative

evaluation was carried out in the middle of a teaching

program that had a function to monitor students'

learning abilities in the teaching and learning process

in order to provide feedback to students and teachers.

In order to measure soft skills, it is necessary to

develop soft skills assessments for DTL practice

activities.

2 LITERATURE STUDY

2.1 Soft Skill

Soft skill is personal behaviours (Choudary &

Ponnuru, 2015; Herison & Wirda, 2012; Schulz,

2008). Soft skill related to intrapersonal and

interpersonal (Aly, 2017; Illah, 2008: 19). Moss &

Till in Romedios (2012) defines soft skills as skills,

abilities and traits related to personality, attitude and

behaviour. Rumengan, et al (2011: 67), defines soft

skill as skill and life skill, both for yourself, in groups,

or in society, and with the Creator. Having soft skills

makes a person's presence more and more felt in the

community such as communication skills, emotional

skill, language skill, group skill, ethics and morals,

courtesy and spiritual skill. Furthermore Rumengan,

et al. say soft skill causes the hard skill to function.

According to Aribowo quoted by Illah (2008: 17),

soft skill is a person's skills in dealing with others

(including with themselves). Soft skill attribute, thus

includes adopted values, motivation, behaviour,

habits, character and attitude. This soft skill attribute

is owned by everyone at different levels, influenced

by the habit of thinking, saying, acting and behaving.

However, this attribute can change if the person wants

to change it by practicing getting used to new things.

Soft skill is complementary to hard skills, this type

of skill is part of a person's intellectual intelligence

and is often used as a condition to obtain a certain

position or job (Mulyono, 2011: 99). Someone who

has soft skills will communicate well, work well,

influence others, and get along well, influence others,

and get along with others (Agarwal & Ahuja, 2014).

Soft skill aspects of students in TDL practice

activities include: initiative, active, obedient,

responsive, working together, creative, uplifting,

positive attitude, communication, honest, polite, and

ethical.

Assessment has special terminology to describe

the activities undertaken by the teacher to obtain

information about the knowledge, skills and attitudes

of students (Marsh, 1996). Attitudes include one

aspect of soft skills, meaning soft skills need to be

measured.

2.2 Assessment

Assessment is a series of activities to obtain, analyze,

and interpret data about process and learning

outcomes at the classroom level that are carried out

systematically and continuously, so that it becomes

meaningful information in decision making

(Sukirman, 2012), then the assessment is said to be

related to measurement and evaluation. Before the

evaluation is done, measurement and assessment are

carried out. Ponto (2016) said that measurements and

assessments were conducted to obtain information as

a basis for policy making or decisions about the

implementation of educational programs.

2.3 Practice DTL

Practice is the actual implementation of what is called

in theory (Hasan, et al, 2005). The same thing said by

Komaruddin (2006) is that practice is a way of

carrying out in real terms what is stated in the theory.

Referring to the theory, what is explained in theory

will be applied in practical activities. Various types of

practice such as in the laboratory are often called

practicum and workshop to train skills for students /

students to have certain competencies as stated in the

school or college curriculum.

Notoatmodjo (2003) argues that practice is

divided into 4 levels according to their quality,

namely: (1) Perception (perception). Knowing and

choosing various objects in connection with the

actions to be taken is a first-rate practice; (2) Guided

response. Being able to do something in the right

order and in accordance with the example is a second

level indicator of practice; (3) Mechanism. If

someone has been able to do something correctly

automatically or something that is already a habit,

EIC 2018 - The 7th Engineering International Conference (EIC), Engineering International Conference on Education, Concept and

Application on Green Technology

472

then he has reached the third level practice; and (4)

Adaptation, is a practice or action that has been well

developed. This means that the action has been

modified without reducing the truth of the action. In

this case Notoatmodjo asserted that someone who

does practical activities to achieve perfect skills is

done through a certain level of process.

Topics of DTL practice activities include: (1) how

to use measuring instruments; (2) measuring

conductivity, voltage, current, resistance and

frequency; (3) testing electrical and electronic

components; and (4) the use of oscilloscopes to

observe wave curves.

In order for DTL practice activities to be carried out

properly, students are required to be serious about

doing so by fulfilling the soft skills aspects.

3 METHODS

This research is to develop soft skills assessment in

DTL practice activities in North Sulawesi provincial

Vocational Schools. The method used is R & D. The

aim of R & D is to develop a product that is good and

effective for schools (Gay, Mills, and Airasian, 2012).

The R & D used is the four-D (4D) model developed

by Thiagarajan, Semmel & Semmmel (1974) with the

stages: (1) define, which is to define the soft skills

aspects of students in DTL practice activities; (2)

design, namely designing an assessment model; (3)

develop, namely to improve products based on expert

validation, field trials of product practicality and

effectiveness; and (4) disseminate, namely the

dissemination of products in the SMK electrical

engineering expertise program in North Sulawesi.

This study will develop students' soft skills

assessment in DTL practice activities. In order to

obtain a quality product, the validity, practicality and

effectiveness of this study will be tested as said by

Nieveen (1999: 127) that the quality of products in

education is viewed from three aspects, namely

validity, practicality and effectiveness.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The product developed in this study is the assessment

of soft skills in DTL practice activities in vocational

schools.

R & D products need to be validated by experts

and tested for practicality and effectiveness testing

(Sugiyono, 2012). To test the validity, flexibility and

effectiveness of a product must be in accordance with

the criteria (Nieveen, 1999).

Validation in this study is about the content of soft

skill assessment. Validation is carried out by two

education measurement and evaluation experts to

give their opinions about the content of soft skill

items. The rubric that will be filled by experts uses a

Likert scale, which is very good (5), good (4),

sufficient (3), lacking (2), and very less (1). Validity

assessment criteria expressed in Table 1.

Overall product validity is calculated using

  





(1)

Where: V = level of validity, ΣM = total mean, and n

= number of items.

The product trial subjects were teachers who

taught DTL practice subjects. In this trial the teacher

uses a draft product to assess students' soft skills in

DTL practice activities. The soft skill of instrument

for rubric uses a Likert scale which is very good (5),

good (4), sufficient (3), lacking (2), and very less (1).

Criteria for assessing the practicality and

effectiveness of products are shown in Tables 2 and

Table 1. Criteria for product validity

Range

Information

V > 4.5

very good

3.5 < V ≤ 4,5

good

3.0 < V ≤ 3.5

sufficient

2.5 < V ≤ 3.0

lacking

≤ 25

very less

Table 2. Practicality testing criteria

Range

Information

P > 4.5

very good

3.5 < P ≤ 4,5

good

3.0 < P ≤ 3.5

sufficient

2.5 < P ≤ 3.0

lacking

P ≤ 25

very less

Table 3. Effectively testing criteria

Range

Information

E > 4.5

very good

3.5 < E ≤ 4,5

good

3.0 < E ≤ 3.5

sufficient

2.5 < E ≤ 3.0

lacking

E≤ 25

very less

Soft Skill Assessment Development in Basic Electrical Engineering Activities of Vocational High School

473

Table 4. Product validation by experts

Item

Number

Assessment Score

Mean

Expert 1

Expert 2

4,5

4.5

Total mean (ΣM)

57.5

Table 5. Practicality data and product effectively

Teacher

Assessment Score

Practicality

Effectively

Total

mean ((ΣM)

Practical use of products to assess students' soft

skills in the overall DTL practice activities is

calculated as

  





(2)

Where: P = level of practicality, ΣAP = total

practicality value, and n = many assessors.

Overall the effectiveness of the product to assess

soft skills of students in DTL practice activities is

calculated as follow

  





(3)

Where: E = level of effectiveness, ΣAE = total value

of effectiveness, and n = many assessors.

Table 4 shows the data of the number of items (n)

of 12 items, while the total mean (ΣM) is 57.5. Then,

the data is substituted into (1), the validity level is 4.8.

Table 1 shows that V = 4.8> 4.5. Thus, as a whole,

these product assessment items meet highly valid

categories.

The results of the trial data for practicality testing

are presented in Table 5. Practical trial results data in

Table 5 are the number of assessor teachers as much

as (n) = 18 while the total practicality value (ΣAP) =

84. After the amounts of the value are substituted into

(2) then it is obtained of 4.7. This size indicates that

P = 4.7> 4.5. Based on the testing criteria in table 2,

the product developed by this product is very

practical.

Table 5 shows the total value of effectiveness

(EAE) = 76 and the number of assessor teachers (n) =

18. After these quantities are substituted into (3) then

E = 4.2> 4.5 is obtained. Thus the products developed

are effectively categorized.

5 CONCLUSIONS

From the results of the study, it was concluded that

the products developed in the category were very

valid. Furthermore, this product is very practical and

effective to be used in measuring and assessing the

soft skills aspects of students in DTL practice

activities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wish to grateful and thankful to

Kemenristekdikti, Republic of Indonesia.which has

help fund for study.

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