The Effect of Guest Lecturers and Online Discussion Forum Towards Students’ Communication Competencies on English for Educational Technologist Course

Rapid development of ICT, especially in the 4.0 industrial revolution era has brought impacts on human’s life including in education. One of the impacts is learning can be conducted anytime and anywhere through online learning setting. Despite of the high potential ability of ICT development can bring, strategies to deliver online class remain hold important roles to the successful of online learning. So far, limited online learning strategies were implemented to teach students in online classes at the Department of Educational Technology at Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha. Because of it, effective online learning strategies are needed. The goal of this research was to test the effect of guest lecturers and online discussion forum toward students’ communication competencies on English for Educational Technologist course. The current research is a quasi-experiment research. The research design is post-test control group design. Subjects of the research are all students who were taking English for Educational Technologist course. The method that was used to collect the data are performance test. Based on the method, the instrument used to collect the data was a performance test rubric. The collected data were then analysed by using descriptive technique and inferential statistical technique. The results show the implementation of guest lecturers and online discussion forum has significant effect toward students’ communication competencies on English for Educational Technologist course. Students’ become highly motivated to learn the learning materials and actively involved in the discussion forums. Based on the research results, further studies on effectiveness of online learning strategies are strongly recommended.