Roslina Ibrahim

Students Perceptions of Using Educational Games to Learn Introductory Programming

Educational computer games studies experienced rapid growth due to the belief that games can offer various learning benefits being highly popular among younger generations. Programming is considered a challenging subject by students and teachers, consequently students feel less motivated to learn it. It is important to know how educational games can help to enhance our student’s motivation and learning perceptions towards Programming. This paper discusses the authors’ pilot study of undergraduate students’ perceptions towards using educational games as their learning medium using five constructs: motivation, attitudes, cognitive development, interface and expectation with 24 items. The findings indicated that most students had encouraging positive attitudes and were more motivated to learn Programming using games compared to conventional methods. The findings are hopefully will help to enrich knowledge in understanding students’ perceptions regarding educational games for learning, particularly in the Malaysian context.

Methodology to evaluate interface of educational computer game

Game is an application that is popularly used in teaching and learning by some of educational institution to-date. Educational computer game (ECG) is a game being used for teaching and learning. Comprehensive methodology that consist of techniques and tools need to be developed to assist the development of ECG. ECG is an application that combines elements of fun and education and the evaluation criteria need to be able to covers all the important criteria. There are 5 heuristics identified; interface, pedagogical, content, playability and multimedia. Two techniques are identified to be used in evaluation process; PHEG for expert evaluators and PAEG for real user. The tool, online evaluation system (AHP_HeGES) is the tool that can be used to simplify the evaluation process. This research is important because it can help the game developers and educationist to conform the important elements that need to be exists in any ECG through evaluation process.

Factors affecting undergraduates' acceptance of educational game: an application of technology acceptance model (TAM)

Educational games (EG) are seen as a promising educational technology. This is due to fun and engaging nature of games compared to other media. However, little studies have been done to investigate factors that might affect students acceptance of EG, especially among undergraduate student. Understanding those factors can assist EG designers in designing better games. This study investigated those factors by applying modified technology acceptance model (TAM). Four (4) factors, namely usefulness, ease of use, attitude and learning opportunity were used. An online survey was done with 63 samples from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) as well as descriptive method. Findings shown that usefulness, ease of use and attitude are significant acceptance factors of EG. Hopefully, this study will enrich literatures regarding EG acceptance factors especially among undergraduate students.

PDEduGame: Towards participatory design process for educational game design in primary school

While participatory design (PD) has always been used in the context of community-based design, its application in designing primary school educational games is quite unique and requires total participation from children. Before applying PD in primary schools for game design, there are processes that must be identified. The selection of journal articles and papers are based on rigorous systematic literature review method, with 386 papers and books on participatory design and educational game topic identified, in which 21 were deemed relevant. An analysis table was developed on these selected papers to uncover the series of process and stages applied in the studies. Our analysis reveals that while different fields applies the participatory design process; most of the research share the same theme in the process. Meta analysis technique was used to form a suitable PD process framework from the theme gathered in the analysis. The formed is called the PDEduGame Process Conceptual Framework, which will act as a guide to educational game design. We suggest that the PDEduGame to be used in the context of primary schools in Malaysia.

Knowledge Communication Model: Malaysian Public Service Phenomena

Malaysian Public Service (MSP) is moving towards efficient citizen-centric and focus on enhancing productivity through a whole-of-government approach supported by a lean and agile organization, competent talent, effective delivery of projects, and efficient services of the local authority. In addition to that, to determine the right direction especially for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) thrust strategy is also one of main concern. Thus, common perceptive between Information Technology (IT) experts and decision makers are essential to ensure for high-quality decision making and coordinated organization achievement. The knowledge integration between IT experts and decision makers is crucial, must well-communicate and comprehensible by both parties. Through the initial study, the phenomena and challenges on knowledge communication process in MSP can be clearly understood.

Finding the Right Elements: User Experience Elements for Educational Games

While there is a prospect of using games for educational purpose, there is still a gap for identifying the balance between educational aspects and entertainment aspects. User experience (UX) plays the role to identify the users feeling when they interact with the product which can result in either positive or negative results. Thus, UX evaluation can help to enhance the quality of educational games as well as take a one step closer to filling the missing gap by identifying the suitable elements for educational games. Based on initial reviews on existing UX frameworks or models, the authors have identified six suitable elements. This paper will study these six elements involves in evaluating user experience for educational games (EG).

The knowledge communication conceptual model in malaysian public sector

Planning for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) future in the context of Malaysian public service is in the hand of group of IT experts and decision makers. Both parties are responsible for making decisions and plan the future ICT direction of the organization. Therefore it is important to comprise common understanding between Information Technology (IT) experts and decision makers so it will lead to a better and comprehensive decision making. However, there are still lacks of studies to describe the parties’ potential to undertake the situation from the perspective of the knowledge integration of among IT experts and decision makers especially in term of communication. Therefore, it is an essential to develop further understanding on the knowledge communication idea. It is done by integrating the concept of both knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. From the literature analysis, the study found knowledge sharing framework and knowledge transfer framework might influence to the knowledge communication model. Therefore further study is recommended to validate the knowledge communication conceptual model in the real organization setting.

Measurement model of relationship between knowledge management enablers and knowledge management performance in public sector

This study investigates the relationship between KM enablers and the KM performance in the Malaysian public sector. Five main independent variables of KM enablers; organizational culture, organizational structure, technology, people and political influence were tested against KM performance using structural equation modeling (SEM). Five hypotheses were tested on the relationship between KM enablers and KM performance. The sampling population of this study was Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE), Malaysia. The result confirmed that organizational culture, organizational structure, technology and people are the distinct constructs for KM enablers. The hypothesis testing indicates that there is a significant relationship between KM enablers and KM performance. The result indicates that Malaysian public sector should cultivate on KM enablers in order to implement effective KM.

An Evaluation of COCHCOMO Tool for Change Effort Estimation in Software Development Phase

Software changes are inevitable in any software project. Software project manager is required to make an effective decision when dealing with the software changes. One type of information that helps to make the decision is the estimation of the change effort produced by the changes. Reliable information of estimation on the change effort is significant to decide whether to accept or reject the changes. From software development perspective, the estimation has to take into account the inconsistent states of software artifacts across project lifecycle i.e., fully developed and partially developed. This research introduces a new change effort estimation tool (Constructive Change Cost Model or COCHCOMO) that is able to take into account the inconsistent states of software artifacts in its estimation process. This tool was developed based on our extended version of static and dynamic impact analysis techniques. Based on extensive experiments using several case studies have shown that an acceptable error rates result has been achieved.