SinAr Mobile Application for Learning the Javanese Letters: A Case Study

The Javanese language is a local subject taught in almost all elementary schools on the island of Java. Most students have difficulties learning Javanese, especially the Javanese letters. They can hardly read and write the Javanese traditional scripts as they are no longer for daily reading and writing. Therefore, this research develops attractive Javanese letters learning medium to ease the students studying the Javanese letters independently and improve their understanding and learning outcomes as an Android-based mobile application. This study involved 57 students (28 students in the experimental group and 29 students in the control group), two Javanese language teachers, and two media experts. Experiments and testing were conducted for approximately two weeks, with the experimental group using the SinAr application and the control group using textbooks during the learning process. The result is that the experimental group show a higher increase in learning outcomes than the control group, so it approached the ability of the control group, which was superior in Javanese lessons based on the pretest and post-test results. The SinAr application also supports understanding of the material, student learning independence, and interesting learning, based on the results of trials on 57 students who overall received and gave good responses to the SinAr application for each aspect of learning design, operational, and visual communication with scores of 4.29 (85%).