IMPROVING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS RETENTION FOR FUTURE TEACHERS IN TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION THROUGH PROJECT-BASED LEARNING (PJBL)

Due to the existence of Vocational Colleges (KV), the teachers' teaching criteria in KV have also undergone a change.Not only teachers need to have theoretical knowledge only, but teachers need to have high set of skills in doing practical work.It is therefore a priority for these future teachers to master and remember what they have learned in the university because they are able to help them when they want to convey to students in KV later.Therefore, lecturers need to use appropriate approaches to ensure that students understand a lesson, so they can remember easily and longer namely using Project Based Learning (PjBL).Hence, the main objective of this study is to look into the impact of PJBL in improving the retention of knowledge and skills of students who are also the future teachers in KV.The sample of this study consisted of two groups of fourth year students who attended the Education and Technology (Mechanical Engineering) courses.This study used quasi experimental study design in which the Pretest-Posttest design was used to look at the effects of PjBL in term of memory retention period of the students.Fully qualitative method was used in which the students in both group were observed and interviewed in order to gain additional findings.The findings show that the students in the experimental group were having improved knowledge and skills retention as 81.8% obtained score above 80 in the Posttest, whereas only 14.3% of the students in the control group obtained score above 80.The findings also showed that the main factor that improved their knowledge and skills retention was the requirement for the students to use problem solving skills during the project works.Thus, PjBL is a suitable learning method to improve the knowledge and skills retentions for the students.