Noraffandy Yahaya

Learning acids and bases through inquiry based website

Chemistry is not an easy subject to learn. Many people regard chemistry as being too hard, too abstract, too mathematical, and only for very bright students. As a result, a negative attitude has developed about chemistry with students claiming chemistry is boring. Besides, most of the chemical concepts articulated by macroscopic, microscopic, and symbolic. This led to conflict and confusion in learning chemistry. Thus, the purpose of this project is to develop a web based learning material on Chemistry Form 4 based on Integrated Curriculum for Secondary Schools (KBSM) syllabuses. This website enables users to learn on their own about the topic of Acids and Bases. Constructivism theory and inquiry based learning approach were integrated in the development of this website. The main subtopics contain in the website are “Concept and Chemical Properties of Acids and Bases”, “Role of Water to Show the Properties of Acids and Alkalis” and “Strength of Acids and Alkalis”. This website was developed using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 as the main platform whereas Macromedia Flash 8, Adobe Photoshop CS2 as well as Sound Forge 7 were used as supportive software. Finally, it is hoped that this website will become as a reference for students to learn this subtopic and to overcome their misconception about Acids and Bases. Other than that, this website is also useful for teachers and other people to get information more about Acids and Bases.

Virtual World for Collaborative Learning: A Review

Over the last century, rapid technological developments have substantially changed the landscape of the education world. As we can see today, most of the teaching and learning activities at all level of studies have been integrated with various forms of technologies, particularly with the Information and Communication Technology. This technology often relates to online learning, which usually involves the use of various forms of 2-dimensional applications. However, the recent times have seen many educational institutions around the globe shifting their interest towards the use of a new application for online learning, known as the virtual world. The virtual world has unique capabilities and unlike its 2-dimensional counterpart, it can generate a 3-dimensional social learning space, amplify the sense of presence and immersion of students, and support various forms of communications and interactions. Utilizing these capabilities with proper instructional strategies in conducting online learning activities can greatly enhance the online learning experience. Without a doubt, the virtual world has been considered as an important tool in modern education practice, especially for collaborative learning. To obtain a comprehensible view of this trend, this paper reviews some of the latest studies which have involved collaborative learning in virtual world. Four main topics were extracted from the reviewed studies: categories of virtual worlds, collaborative strategies used in the studies, focus of each study, and challenges of collaborative learning in virtual world.

The Nature of Student Group Online Interactions in Learning ICT Education

This study investigated the nature of student group interactions through the incorporation of online collaborative learning (OCL) initiative, with its aim to enhance students’ learning in a Malaysian tertiary multimedia and ICT education course. Data collected from questionnaires, interviews and online forum transcripts were the basis for an interpretive analysis of students’ interactions in online collaborative learning and to assess the extent to which it was successful in enhancing students’ learning. The results showed four types of student group interactions styles: strategic, task directed, peripheral and disengaged which in support of the students’ cognitive, social and emotional development. The research also found that the incorporation of online collaborative learning can lead to the facilitation of the student and student’s group learning process and potential constraints from the technology or the lack of social and verbal cues can lead to different working methods of communication and different styles of interactions and student’s engagement.

Designing Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) for Learning Chemical Bonds

This research study is about the designing of mobile augmented reality (MAR) applications for learning chemical bonds. Due to the emergence of the MAR in the education field, the authors take this opportunity to adopt the advantages of the MAR in chemical bonds. This is due to the effectiveness of MAR in visualization, which is believed to be helpful in reducing the problems of visualization on the topic of chemical bonds. In order to ensure the learning process is successful as the author needed, the instructional design model, which is ADDIE, has been used in the development of the MAR applications for learning chemical bonds through their learning environment. There were five phases involved in the model to make sure that the process of before, during, and after using the MAR applications has achieved the objectives listed. This study discusses how each phase takes place.