Development of Basic Science Skills Training Packages for Higher Education

Abstract

              Scientific skills are very important for proving and testing to find scientific answers. They require sequential training to gain expertise and deft in scientific practice. Basic Science Skills will help learners to better understand science lessons. They form the basis for the learning of more complex skills involving more detailed procedures. Accordingly, this research aimed to study Basic Science Skills, including developing Basic Science Skills Training Packages and assessing their quality. The research was conducted in three phases which were, first, studying and gathering scientific skills from curricular documents and opinions conveyed through questionnaires administered to nine tertiary lecturers of physics, chemistry and biology; second, selecting basic scientific skills and developing Basic Science Skills Training Packages; and, third, assessing the quality of these Training Packages. Quality assessment was focused on four aspects: academic contents, information technology contents, benefits, and applications, and was completed by 13 academic and information technology experts who were purposively selected, as well as by a total of 27 participants selected by stratified random sampling technique from the students of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University.

           The research found that 1) the key features of the Basic Science Skills for higher education are that they are common skills used in many subjects and require a combination of many sub-skills; 2) the skills put into the Training Packages were seven skills – Electrical circuits skills, Measurement tools skills, Titration skills, Separation and purification skills, Plant and animal specimen preparation skills, Plant and animal dissection skills, and scientific report writing skills; 3) the Training Packages were self-learning kits in a video format; and 4) experts both of academic contents and information technology contents, as well as the student participants had the highest level of agreement regarding the quality of the Training Packages in terms of their benefits and applications; the experts had the high level of agreement and the student participants the highest level regarding their academic contents, and finally both cohorts had the high level of agreement regarding the information technology contents of the Training Packages.