Abstract—Critical thinking is rational and reflective thinking
involved in decision making. Knowledge acquisition refers to
the level achieved by students in understanding the materials
and meaning of the learning context. Critical thinking and
knowledge acquisition can be enriched through applications of
relevant learning strategies. The aim of this study was to
investigate the correlation between critical thinking and
knowledge acquisition in the process of implementing Digital
Mind Maps-Problem Based Learning (Digital Mind Maps-PBL).
The learning process was conducted to students from
Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia, who were enrolled in the
even semester of 2018 in biology education department . The
instrument used to measure the students’ critical thinking and
knowledge acquisition, that was in the form of essay tests, had
been confirmed valid by the result of the Pearson Product
Moment analysis. The reliability test using Cronbach's Alpha
also showed that this instrument was reliable for measuring
critical thinking and knowledge acquisition (correlation
coefficients are 0.837 and 0.872, respectively). The results of the
study indicated that critical thinking and knowledge acquisition
were correlated with a value of 0.861 and a determination
coefficient of 0.742, where Y = 1.215X – 4.323. It can be
concluded that Digital Mind Maps-PBL strategies can be used
to refine students’ critical thinking, which may result in the
improvement of students’ knowledge acquisition. Therefore,
the implementation of Digital Mind Maps-PBL strategies in the
classroom is highly recommended.
Index Terms—Critical thinking, digital mind maps-PBL,
knowledge acquisition.
The authors are with Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia and a lecturer
at Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia, 65145, Indonesia (e-mail:
khairobo@edu.uir.ac.id, siti.zubaidah.fmipa@um.ac.id,
ending.suarsini.fmipa@um.ac.id, henry.praherdhiono.fip@um.ac.id).
Cite: Nurkhairo Hidayati, Siti Zubaidah, Endang Suarsini, and Henry Praherdhiono, "The Relationship between Critical Thinking and Knowledge Acquisition: The Role of Digital Mind Maps-PBL Strategies," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 140-145, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).