The Discovery Learning Model: The Right Solution in the Pandemic Era

According to the WHO, the corona virus or COVID-19 is a disease caused by a new type of virus, namely Sars-CoV-2, which was first reported in Wuhan, China on 31 December 2019.  COVID-19 is a contagious disease that attacks the human respiratory system and can cause death. At present, COVID-19 cases in Indonesia have become a pandemic because the number of patients exposed to the coronavirus has increased significantly. The COVID-19 outbreak, which has swept through 215 countries in the world, poses its own challenges for educational institutions. To fight COVID-19, the government has banned crowding, and has required social restrictions (social distancing), keeping physical distance (physical distancing), wearing masks, and always washing hands.

To slow the spread of COVID-19, the Minister of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia issued Circular Letter Number 3 of 2020 on the prevention of COVID-19, which states that the Indonesian Government is enforcing an online learning policy through the use of various digital applications as an alternative solution for online learning media. Through the Circular Letter of the Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture No. 1 of  2020, the Ministry of Education and Culture  prohibited all forms of meetings for usual face-to-face learning, to be replaced with online learning.

This online learning can bring students and teachers together to carry out learning interaction with the help of the internet. Online learning is also carried out by primary school, junior high school, senior high school, and university students throughout Indonesia. The COVID-19 outbreak has given the education sector, especially learning in schools, an opportunity to learn online. Online learning in this pandemic era is an implementation effort to adapt to rapid technological development. This technological development is expected to bring great change and influence to aspects of human life, including in education. The learning system in schools is carried out online by utilising information technology.

 Online learning aims to meet educational standards by utilising information technology that can connect teachers and students through computers or gadgets so that the teaching and learning process continues to run well. However, students' lack of learning motivation makes them lazy to take part in online learning activities. Moreover, the lack of support from the home environment further makes children's enthusiasm for learning fade and they are less active in this online learning. In addition, many obstacles occur, both poor signal and running out of data quota while online learning is under way. This affects the index of teaching and learning success during the pandemic. Therefore, education in Indonesia needs a learning model that suits what they want in the pandemic era. The appropriate learning model during the pandemic is the discovery learning model. This learning model can be an appropriate solution for increasing students' enthusiasm for learning in the pandemic era.

The discovery learning model is often called heuristic, which comes from the Greek heuriskein, meaning I discover. According to Jerome Brunner in Ali Mudlofir (2011:68), discovery learning is a learning model that encourages students to ask questions and draw conclusions from general practical principles such as experience. Wilcolx also argues that in discovery learning, students are encouraged to learn actively through their own active involvement with learning concepts and principles, while the teacher's task is to encourage students to have experiences and carry out experiments as far as possible.

This discovery learning model trains students to discover principles independently because it is all for themselves. Discovery learning emphasises the process of searching and discovering, so that subject matter is not given directly. The role of students is very important in this learning model because students search for and discover the subject matter themselves, while the teacher acts only as a facilitator or guide for students' learning.

The discovery learning model, in the process of applying online learning, has steps that must be observed and carried out. These steps include: first, giving stimulation (stimullation), in which the teacher prepares students to carry out the learning process by giving stimulation that refers to the material to be learned. Second, problem identification, a step that brings students to a problem that challenges them to think about solving it. Third, data collection, in which students are asked to actively search for and collect data to find answers to the problem presented. Fourth, data processing, in which students actively process the data they have found into answers to the problem presented. Fifth, verification, in which students prove their findings to the teacher and their friends to test their correctness. And sixth is drawing conclusions.

This discovery learning model is very suitable for application in the current education curriculum in Indonesia, namely the 2013 curriculum, in the pandemic era, because teaching and learning activities are not teacher-centred but require students to be active in class. Applying this learning model can train students to be confident in speaking in public and also gives a sense of comfort in learning. There are very many benefits from applying this learning model. Thus, this learning model makes students feel comfortable, happy, and able to think positively so as to foster students' learning motivation in the COVID-19 pandemic era, so that the teaching and learning process in schools runs smoothly.