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THE EVALUATION AND REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE: A
CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH FORM FOUR TEACHING COURSEWARE
HASUBAZILAH BINTI HASAN
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Bachelor of Science and Education (TESL)
Faculty of Education
University of Technology Malaysia
April, 2010
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� Dedicated to �
My beloved parents;
My supportive sisters and brothers;
My wonderful nieces and nephews;
Friends and all the amazing people around me.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Allah S.W.T
for His blessings in making it possible for me to complete this thesis. Without His help,
it would have been impossible for me to endure this challenge.
I would like to express my most sincere gratitude and appreciation to my
supervisor , Puan Khairuzilah Khalil for her guidance, advice and endless support
throughout the process of completing this study.
My sincere thanks to Dr Azizah Rejab and Dr Adlina Samad for their
encouraging comments in making this study a success.
Finally I would like to express my love and gratitude to may family especially
my beloved parents, Hasan b Umar and Ramlah bt Abd Wahab and my sisters, Hasnida,
Hasnita, Hasuzila and Hasuhamizah. My deepest love and appreciation to my fellow
TESLian classmates, thank you so much. It has been a wonderful 4-year journey.
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ABSTRACT
The use of courseware as one of the teaching materials has become popular recently due
to the rapid development of computer technology in Malaysia. The ministry of education
has also distributed a set of courseware that can help to teach literature better. This study
investigates the characteristics of the courseware used to teach literature (short stories),
with the focus given on its presentation scheme, and the restrictions faced by teachers in
using the courseware in teaching and learning process. In addition to that, this study also
tried to look from students’ point of view on the usage of this courseware. The research
was conducted on 40 students of SMK Kompleks Sultan Abu Bakar, Johor and 5
English teachers who are familiar with the content of the courseware. Respondents were
required to answer the questionnaire distributed to them and for teachers; they were also
required to evaluate the presentation scheme of the courseware. The data obtained in this
study were analyzed using qualitative research methodology. The result shows that the
students have very positive attitudes towards the use of the courseware in classroom
(mean = 2.82), the presentation scheme is appropriate (mean = 2.85) and few significant
problems faced by teachers in using it (mean = 2.77).Implications of the findings and
suggestions for future research are further explained.
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ABSTRAK
Penggunaan koswer sebagai salah satu bahan mengajar agak popular
kebelakangan ini selari dengan perkembangan teknologi komputer yang giat
membangun di Malaysia. Kementerian Pelajaran juga telah mengedarkan set-set koswer
yang boleh membantu mengajar komponen sastera Bahasa Inggeris dengan lebih baik.
Kajian ini mengenal pasti ciri-ciri yang terdapat pada koswer yang diedarkan ke sekolah
dengan skema persembahannya sebagai focus utama, dan juga halangan yang dihadapi
oleh para guru dalam menggunakan koswer ini. Selain itu, kajian ini juga mengenalpasti
pandangan pelajar terhadap penggunaannya didalam kelas semasa proses pembelajaran.
Kajian telah dijalankan terhadap 40 orang pelajar dari SMK Kompleks Sultan Abu
Bakar, Johor dan 5 orang guru bahasa Inggeris yang telah didedahkan dengan isi
kandungan koswer tersebut. Data yang diperoleh dari kajian ini telah diproses secara
kualitatif. Keputusan menunjukkan para pelajar mempunyai tanggapan yang positif
terhadap penggunaan koswer ini didalam kelas (min= 2.82), skema persembahan
keseluruhannya adalah memuaskan (min= 2.85) dan beberapa halangan yang signifikan
dihadapi oleh para guru didalam menggunakan koswer ini( min= 2.77). Implikasi dari
dapatan dan juga cadangan untuk kajian pada masa akan datang juga turut disertakan.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER TITLE PAGE
Supervisor’s Approval
Title Page
Student’s Declaration ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Abstract v
Abstrak vi
Table of Contents vii
List of Tables xi
List of Figures xii
List of Appendices xiv
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Background of the Study 1
1.3 Statement of Problem 5
1.4 Purpose of the study 7
1.5 Objectives 8
1.6 Research Questions 8
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1.7 Significance of the study 9
1.8 Scope of the study 10
1.9 Definition of Term 10
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 Computer in Education 12
2.2.1 Education: why computers? 13
2.2.2 The myth of the educational computers 14
2.2.3 Technology & Cognition: Tools for mind 15
2.3 The introduction of CALL 16
2.3.1 The Development of CALL 16
2.3.2 CALL courseware in the classroom 18
2.4 Educational Courseware Standards 20
2.4.1 The evaluation of educational courseware 20
2.4.2 Techniques & approaches in evaluation 21
2.4.2.1 The evaluation framework 21
2.4.2.2 The Heuristic approach 22
2.4.2.3 The Checklist approach 23
2.5 Previous Studies 24
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3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction 27
3.2 Research Design 27
3.3 Subject of study 28
3.4 Research Instrument 29
3.4.1 Courseware Checklist 29
3.4.2 Questionnaire sets 30
3.5 Pilot Study 30
3.6 Research procedure 31
3.6.1 Administration of courseware checklist 32
3.6.2 Administration of Questionnaire 32
3.7 Data analysis 33
3.7.1 Analysis of courseware checklist 33
3.7.2 analysis of Questionnaire 34
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Introduction 35
4.2 Characteristics of form four selected shorts
stories courseware 37
4.3 Teachers’ views on courseware’s presentation
scheme 39
4.4 The restriction faced by the teachers 49
4.4.1 Restrictions from teachers 49
4.4.2 Restrictions from the courseware 52
4.5 Students’ views on the courseware 57
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5 CONCLUSION
5.0 Introduction 65
5.1 Summary of the study 65
5.2 Pedagogical implications of the study 67
5.3 Limitation of the study 68
5.4 Suggestion for future research 69
5.5. Conclusion 70
REFERENCES 71
APPENDICES A-D 75-86
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LIST OF TABLES
TABLE NUM. TOPIC PAGE
4.1.1 Indicators 36
4.3.1 Respondents’ demographic info 39
4.5.0 Respondents’ demographic info 57
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LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE NUM. TOPIC PAGE
4.3.1 Software characteristic Percentage of views on 40
4.3.2 Percentage of views on the graphic 41
4.3.3 Percentage of views on the font 42
4.3.4 Percentage of views on text 43
4.3.5 Percentage of views on the navigation system 44
4.3.6 Percentage of views on audio 45
4.3.7 Percentage of views on other elements 46
4.3.9 Overall mean value for courseware presentation
scheme
47
4.4.1.1(a) Percentage of restrictions from teachers 50
4.4.1.1(b) Percentage of restrictions from teachers 51
4.4.1.2(a) Percentage of restrictions from the courseware 52
4.4.1.2(b) Percentage of restrictions from the courseware 53
4.4.1.2(c) Percentage of restrictions from the courseware 54
4.4.1.3 Percentage of restrictions from others 55
4.4.1.4 Overall mean value for restrictions faced by teacher 56
4.5.1 Mean score for multimedia elements 58
4.5.2 (a) Percentage of the courseware for learning/exam
purposes
59
4.5.2 (a) Percentage of the courseware for learning/exam 60
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purposes
4.5.2 (c) Percentage of the courseware for learning/exam
purposes
61
4.5.3 Percentage of the courseware layout 62
4.5.4 Overall mean value of students’ perspective 63
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LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX TITLE PAGE
A Teacher’s Questionnaire 76
B Students’ Questionnaire 82
C Evaluation Checklist 85
D EPRD’s Approval Letter 86
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
This chapter provides an insight to the background, purpose and significance of the
study on the evaluation and review of educational software: a case study of English form
four teaching courseware. Definitions of terms are also specified to further assist in
understanding this project paper.
1.2 Background of the study.
English education in Malaysia has evolved tremendously starting on the opening
of the first school in Penang during the British colonial era. Literature has been regarded
as one of the core subjects in education and that scenario remains unchanged ever since
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for years, even after the end of the colonialism. However in 1970’s, a drastic shift has
taken place where English was taught only as a second language. The significant
transformation was primarily due to the implementation of the Education Enactment Bill in
1971 (Idrus, 2009). Starting on the day on, English is no longer the medium of instruction
in schools and subjects that used to be taught using English were changed to Malay. This
change has resulted in a sharp drop in the number of students opting to do literature as
an examination subject.
In 1990, the subject has been integrated within the English language program that
aimed to promote English proficiency and the study of literature in general, beginning at
the lower secondary level (Subramaniam, 2003). The program, called The Class Reader
has been launched in order to expand reading skills and to establish elements of
literature into language teaching. However it failed to fulfill the aim set on its launching
as it is not a compulsory part of the English language curriculum. The integration of
literary component within English language lesson in 2001 has brought back hope for
literature where starting on that year, the literature has been put on the syllabus and
students will be tested on them during PMR and SPM. This integrated component within
English language lesson is aimed at enhancing students' language proficiency, and at the
same time geared for the purpose of generating the aesthetic part of the language that is
personal response from student (Hwang & Embi, 2007).
Since that day, the government has never looked back and keeps on improving on
the policies by preparing and distributing the courseware to be used in teaching
literature. According to Subramaniam (2003) literature should be taught for all these 16
purposes:
• Pleasure
• Fostering good reading habits
• Offering challenges hence achievements
• Providing genuine communication of ideas
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• Offering linguistics model
• Developing comprehension and motivation
• Balancing receptive and productive skills
• Providing reach and diverse exposure to language
• Improving concentration
• Encouraging reflection
• Allowing contact with native speakers’ world
• Improving vocabulary, syntax and structure
• Allowing learning from what is not taught
• Increasing exposure to language in a limited time.
• Leading to language acquisition.
CALL courseware that has been distributed to the schools nationwide is
undoubtedly interactive, complete with notes and exercises and more important, serving
a platform for the students to have fun while studying. Based on the list, it can be
concluded that the use of CALL courseware developed by the government for the
teaching literature purposes is the best choice in aiding the teaching since it fulfill almost
half of the criteria. The use of courseware in classroom is very beneficial since it can be
used as a powerful tool in grabbing students’ attention. For the short story part, it comes
in the form of animation and that is believed to help a lot in understanding the whole
story and at the same time very enjoyable for the students.
In spite of all the advantages bring by the courseware usage in teaching
literature; most of the teachers still do not use the technology even though all the
facilities have been prepared for them. Most of them still feel comfortable to teach using
the traditional way just like what they had been taught in the past. Recent studies have
reported that students were seen to be passive and were unable to respond critically and
literature lessons were often too teacher-centered and thus, labeling teachers to be dull
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and less creative (Gurnam Kaur, 2003; Siti Norliana, 2003; Suriya Kumar, 2004) This is
because “substantial and effective professional development is rare, and many teachers
naturally gravitate towards the more familiar methods they remember from their own
experience as students” (Sparks, 1998). Hence, the coursewares provided by the
government are not fully utilized to the maximum and most of the school just keep them
rather than use them. This is such a big waste since a vast amount of money have been
invested in producing the CDs
However, with the sudden change in education policies where ETeMS is no
longer be used starting from 2012, the syllabus for English language subject is also
changed, including the literature part. As a kick start, only form four and form one
students will be using the new syllabus launched so all the previous courseware
provided, including the samples used in this study will also soon be obsolete. Looking
from the bright side of it, the change of the syllabus also means that the government will
come up with a new set of courseware to replace the older version. Any adaptation and
improvement can be done by studying the previous usage of the courseware, like the
strengths of them and also their weaknesses. Thus, this is the right time to evaluate the
CDs so the next set of them will be more attractive and effective to be used in the
classroom.
Software evaluation can be done using any methods as utilized by researchers in
the previous study. It ranged from the simplest one, which is the common checklist
method as improved by Elissavet and Economides (2003) to a different, better way of
evaluation as proposed by Hubbard (1987) through his ‘framework approach’
Does not matter what ever approach used by the evaluator, most of the
assessment contains these elements : the hardware needed to run the program, the
presence and quality of documentation and printed support materials, the topic area and
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content of the program, its ease of use and reliability of operation, and the use of color,
graphics and sound in the program ( Bayram & Nous, 2004).What count is that by
evaluating the courseware, the teacher can decide whether the software’s objectives are
in line with the objectives already set for that classroom.
1.3 Statement of problem
Education trends nowadays have been shaped majorly by today’s rapid
technological advancement, particularly through multimedia-based learning
(Muthukumar, 2004). As a developing country, Malaysia also has step forward in
education field with the integration of computer in teaching and learning. As a part of
strategy in bridging the digital gap between students of urban areas with those who
studying in remote area, which has been the main concern for the government lately, the
use of technology in the form of educational courseware has become the most potential
way of executing it.
Not only they have been distributed as there was a change in education policy
where science subjects were required to be taught in English, and the implementation of
literature component in English language classroom, the government has came up with
this strategy to make sure that all these subjects will be well taught by the teachers.
These series of educational CALL courseware made specifically not only to ease
teachers’ burden in preparing the materials for the entire topic stated in the syllabus, but
also play a role as a very effective tool in teaching and learning. As stated by Price et al
(1996), computer is regarded as a powerful tool to decrease workload. Quoting Salwani
et al (2008) “technological innovations such as the development of an interactive,
comprehensive and multidimensional educational courseware as an effective learning
tool to assist educators in teaching and learning process would be an advantage”
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Focusing on the English courseware that also provides literature component in
each CD, it is found that only some of English teachers use this courseware in teaching
simply because the school is not well equipped with the appropriate facilities such as
LCD projectors and computers, and some other teachers just find it useless in increasing
students’ interest in the classroom, while others claimed that they need to sacrifice a lot
of time just to set them up. It should not be a problem at this moment because as
compared to few years back, the cost of multimedia computers now worth every penny
if we were to look at its usefulness (Lomik & Punik, 1999).
Using courseware in the classroom can be frustrated sometimes. This is due to
the fact that it is impossible to find a perfect educational courseware that can be utilized
to all level of students. Besides that, not all educational courseware are developed based
on the current needs of both teachers and students. Hence, it is suggested that teachers
“carry out a full evaluation to reveal whether the developers have tackled a subject
according to its educational objectives” (Sahari et all, 2009).Evaluation can be made
according to teachers’ preference, because there are selections of method that can be
chosen by the teachers.
According to Rivera (1992), many students feel that educational courseware
“slow, repetitive, very similar and boring” although computers serve as facilities that
“can provide lessons that are fast-paced, interactive, friendly and multimedia-based”.
This might be caused by thousands of reason, but as first impression counts, the
presentation scheme of the courseware may have some influence towards this
phenomenon. It is because “content and design are the two most important elements of
good software” (Diptinto & Turner, 1995; Small & Grabowski, 1992).
Usually, the major goal of assessing instructional software is to find out “if it can
be used effectively in a particular classroom” (Reiser & Kegelmann, 1994). In order to
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achieve the goal, teachers can adopt any of the assessment approaches available.
Evaluation checklist is the most popular one since it requires less time to be completed
as opposed to other approaches. The most important thing here is that the aim of doing
the evaluation can be achieved.
1.4 Purpose of the study
The purpose of the study is to evaluate the characteristics of the educational
courseware used for teaching form four literature in the classroom. In addition to that,
this study also tried to look not only on its’ presentation scheme but as teaching involves
both students and teachers, thus their views on the usage are also crucial to be look at.
This series of courseware will be actually obsolete starting from 2012 due to sudden
change in national education policy, but the checklist used in this study can still be used
to evaluate other educational software too. Besides that, the government will be surely
come up with a new version of the courseware, in line with the new curriculum
specification launched. Thus, any adjustment can be made to the new version of the
courseware to make sure that they will help the teachers in grabbing students’ attention
during the class and eventually make learning in classroom fun and attractive.
The tasks of evaluating educational environments as well as finding and
comparing the evaluations are difficult for teachers. However it still needs to be done
because teachers usually seek educational software they feel most likely to produce
positive learning outcomes (Hawley et al., 1997).
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1.5 Objectives
This research was conducted to fulfill the objectives followed:
i. To evaluate the characteristics of form four selected short stories literature
courseware.
ii. To identify the teachers’ view on the presentation schemes of form 4 short
stories literature courseware towards teachers’ usage in literature classroom
iii. To identify the restrictions faced by teachers in using the form 4 selected
short stories literature courseware in the classroom.
iv. To investigates the students’ views on the form four selected short stories
literature courseware.
1.6 Research Questions
The research is guided by the following four research questions, which are:
i. What are the characteristics of form 4 selected short stories literature
courseware?
ii. What are the teachers’ views on the presentation scheme of the form 4
selected short stories literature courseware?
iii. What are the restrictions faced by the teacher in using the form four selected
short stories literature courseware in the classroom?
iv. What are the students’ views on the form 4 selected short stories literature
courseware?
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1.7 Significance Of The Study
The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of educational
CALL software and to investigate whether its presentation scheme influences the usage
of this courseware in the classroom. Besides that, this study also tries to look into the
limitations faced by the teachers in integrating the courseware in their teaching. Thus it
is hoped that the findings from this study will benefit the government in making any
amendment needed to the new sets of CDs, especially for English subject as the new
syllabus has been launched this year.
Hence, the new version will be way better than the previous version, which is the
one that has been used as a subject of this study. It is also hoped that it can be used as
reference for the developer of educational CALL courseware on the important elements
required in a courseware and how this technology can be tuned so that the goal of
developing it can be successfully achieved.
1.8 Scope of the Study
This study is on the issue of the evaluation of educational CALL courseware for
teaching English, focusing on users’ views on its presentation scheme, the limitations of
it usage as well as the limitations, strengths and weaknesses to be integrated in the
classroom. As the government has distributed various sets of courseware covering
English and science subjects, the set of form four teaching courseware has been selected.
To make it easier to be analyzed, the focus then has been narrowed down only to the
literature (short stories) part, particularly on its presentation scheme.
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This study involved the participation of 40 students of SMK Kompleks Sultan
Abu Bakar , Gelang Patah, Johor Bahru with different level of proficiency and 2 English
teachers from the same school. For the courseware evaluation’s purposes, 3 more
teachers from different schools took part to evaluate the courseware. The data collected
were then analyzed based on the results from the questionnaires distributed to the
targeted respondents earlier.
1.9 Definition of Term
The following terms have been defined in relation to the study that will be carried
out so that there will not be any misleading preconceptions
1.9.1 CALL courseware
An abbreviation of Computer aided language learning courseware. In this study,
the courseware is referring to the set of courseware distributed by the government to
help teachers in school to teach English form 4, including the literature component
better. There are 6 CDs altogether and each CD contains one or two poem and short
stories.
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1.9.2 Novel Paradigm
A situated approach to predictive evaluation. This paradigm generates context
specific evaluation issues by considering the interactions between the three principal
factors associated with the development and use of educational software — the teacher,
the designer and the student(s).