Helmi Norman

A Historical Review of Mobile Learning Research in Malaysia and Its Implications for Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific Region

Mobile technologies have rapidly grown over the past decade and have become ubiquitous in all sectors of education. This scenario has enabled mobile learning to grow – providing learners with more mobility to learn anywhere, anytime in a connected learning environment. Together with this growth, research in this field has expanded worldwide. This growth has also impacted Malaysia – with the upward trend of mobile learning research conducted by Malaysian researchers and educators. To illustrate the history of this research trend, the chapter reviews mobile learning research in Malaysia in four research waves: (1) the emergence of mobile learning research (year 2003–2006), (2) mobile learning early research (2007–2010), (3) growth of mobile learning research (2010–2013) and (4) mobile learning research extension (2014–2016). The chapter ends with implications and future directions for Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific for educators and researchers interested in the field of mobile learning in Malaysia and its potential application in the Asia-Pacific context.

Use of Social Media and Social Network Analysis for Mobile Learning

Social media has currently become a ubiquitous communication tool in all facets of the society. It enables networks of communication channels to become available—linking us to networks of people, organizations, and information. The education sector is also benefiting from the growth of social media in areas such as mobile learning. Yet, despite its’ rapid growth and integration in mobile learning, research in this field is still relatively new, particularly in areas relating to investigation of social network analysis in mobile learning. Thus, the chapter focuses the discussion on the approaches of integrating social media for mobile learning and links it to appropriate learning theories and strategies. The chapter then taps into a case study of social network analysis and explains how it can be used to discover the dynamics of social roles in learning as well as participation levels in mobile learning. The chapter ends with a discussion on conclusions and future directions for future educators and researchers interested in the use of social media for mobile learning.

Cross-culture Learning in Massive Open Online Courses for Higher Education (Pembelajaran Merentas Budaya Melalui Massive Open Online Courses untuk Pendidikan Tinggi)

Cross-cultural learning in higher education involves providing an equitable interaction of diverse cultures and moving towards generation of shared cultural expression through dialogue and mutual respect at local, national, regional, and international levels. This can be achieved via the use of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which has received much interest over recent years. Yet, in designing successful cross-cultural learning via MOOCs, there are three important aspects that are worth to be considered. They are instructional design, learning content and tasks design and technological acceptance of MOOCs. This paper focuses its’ discussion on these three aspects via a study conducted by online surveys conducted with 135 undergraduates at a local university. Findings indicated that with regards to learning content design, types of video lectures that can enhance MOOC learning are animations and live action videos that are integrated with casual style of communication and humor aspects. Findings also revealed that in terms of learning task design, fully and loose structured learning tasks are both of equal importance and both high and low autonomy is important. The paper concludes with issues and challenges in MOOC development and implementation. Keywords: MOOCs; cross-cultural learning; higher education; learning content design; learning task design Pembelajaran merentas budaya di peringkat pendidikan tinggi melibatkan penyediaan interaksi saksama pelbagai budaya dan menuju ke arah generasi yang berkongsi melalui dialog di peringkat tempatan, kebangsaan, serantau dan antarabangsa. Hal ini boleh dicapai melalui pengaplikasian massive open online courses (MOOC), yang telah mendapat perhatian kebelakangan ini. Namun, dalam mereka bentuk pembelajaran silang budaya yang efektif melalui MOOC, terdapat tiga aspek penting yang perlu dipertimbangkan. Antara aspek-aspeknya adalah reka bentuk pengajaran, reka bentuk bahan dan aktiviti pembelajaran. Kertas kajian ini menumpukan perbincangan kepada ketiga-tiga aspek ini melalui kajian tinjauan yang dilakukan melalui soal selidik dalam talian bersama 135 pelajar sarjana muda di sebuah universiti tempatan. Dapatan kajian berkaitan dengan rekabentuk bahan pembelajaran menunjukkan bahawa bentuk bahan yang boleh meningkatkan pembelajaran MOOC adalah animasi dan lakonan yang diintegrasi dengan bahasa komunikasi kasual dan diselitkan dengan unsur jenaka. Dapatan kajian berkaitan dengan rekabentuk tugasan pembelajaran juga menunjukkan bahawa kedua-dua jenis tugasan pembelajaran, iaitu berstruktur dan tidak berstruktur, serta autonomi pelajar yang tinggi dan rendah adalah penting dalam pembelajaran MOOC. Kertas kerja diakhiri dengan isu-isu dan cabaran dalam pembangunan dan pelaksanaan MOOC. Kata kunci: MOOCs, pembelajaran merentas budaya; pendidikan tinggi; reka bentuk kandungan pembelajaran; reka bentuk tugasan pembelajaran

Learners’ Perception on Learning Materials and Tasks of a Massive Open Online Course

Recent years have seen massive open online courses (MOOCs) emerge as one of the most trending online learning environments. Malaysia has also embarked on MOOCs with its’ Malaysia MOOC initiative, which is a collaboration between the Ministry of Education Malaysia with 20 public universities. In the initiative, Universiti Malaysia Kebangsaan (UKM) has developed a MOOC for ethnic relations. This study investigates learners’ perception of MOOC learning materials based on: type of video lectures; (ii) communication style in video lectures; and humor effect (speech ballons) in video lectures. The study also studies MOOC learning tasks according to the factors which are: structure of learning tasks, learner autonomy in learning tasks, and social settings of learning tasks. A survey is distributed to 104 undergraduates studying in an ethnic relation at UKM. The MOOC is used as learning resource. The study is conducted in a period of four months. The findings indicate that with regards to MOOC learning materials, live action videos and animations, informal communication style and integration of human elements (speech ballons) are preferred by learners. The findings also indicated that for MOOC learning tasks, learners prefer unstructured learning tasks rather than structured ones and they prefer to learn in groups rather than individually. Mixed results were obtained for learner autonomy where half of the learners preferred student-center learning while the other half preferred teacher-based instruction.

Towards Envisioning the Future of Learning in Malaysia: Development of a Malaysia MOOC Based on the Iterative ADDIE Instructional Design Framework

A new phenomenon that is receiving much attention on the global higher education landscape is the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The vision behind MOOCs is for knowledge to be disseminated to a global set of learners in an open learning environment. In line with this vision, Malaysia has recently launched the Malaysia MOOCs initiative, a joint collaboration between the Ministry of Education Malaysia and four public universities. As one of the collaborators, we have developed a MOOC for Ethnic Relation course. The MOOC was developed using a modified version of the ADDIE (analysis, design, develop, implement, and evaluate) framework which we term as the ‘Iterative ADDIE Instructional Design Framework’. The chapter discusses our experiences that were faced in the MOOC development process. The chapter also touches on students’ perception of MOOCs in terms of attitude, self-efficacy, and anxiety. Implications and future directions are also discussed.