Electronic Encyclopedia of Traditional Medicinal Plants at the Museum Pusaka Nias as Supporting Media for Students’ Plant Awareness

Low student awareness of the existence, diversity, and importance of plants in daily life—referred to as plant awareness, which includes attention, attitudes, relative interest, and knowledge toward plants—remains a challenge in biology learning, partly due to the limited use of electronic learning media that integrate biodiversity with local wisdom or indigenous knowledge. Traditional medicinal plants from the Museum Pusaka Nias have strong potential as contextual learning resources; however, they have not been optimally developed in electronic form. This study aimed to develop an electronic encyclopedia of Nias traditional medicinal plants for high school biology learning and to examine students' plant awareness after its implementation. The study employed a research and development approach adapted from the Lee & Owens model, consisting of Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation stages. Media feasibility was assessed by media experts, material experts, and biology education practitioners, while implementation used a one-group pretest–posttest design. Plant awareness was measured using a questionnaire adapted from Parsley and analyzed descriptively. The results indicated that the electronic encyclopedia was valid and practical, as evidenced by expert validation and user responses. Descriptive analysis of the pretest and posttest results showed an increase in students’ plant awareness scores from 54.19 to 85.03. These findings suggest that the electronic encyclopedia is feasible as a learning medium and supports the development of students’ plant awareness through contextual, indigenous knowledge–based biology learning. The findings also contribute to theory by enriching the discourse on plant awareness development and by supporting the integration of indigenous knowledge into digital biology learning.