As Covid-19 cases increased rapidly in Malaysia, the Movement Control Order was imposed nationwide by the government, resulting in immediate closure of schools and universities. Consequently, teaching and learning were instantaneously transformed into distance and remote formats. This article offers a snapshot into how teacher educators and student teachers, coped with the unprecedented situation. We also share our reflections and examination of the online teaching and learning experiences through the lens of TPACK and online learning models. A major implication for both teacher educators and student teachers is to acquire TPACKtechnological knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge to ensure learning continuity and equity.
Gamification in education refers to the introduction of game elements in the design of learning processes. Our gamification approach was based on the self-determination theory. According to this theory, people need to have competence, social connectedness, and autonomy in order to feel determined to perform certain activities. We aimed to investigate the effects of teaching presence in online gamification on sustainability learning and self-determination as well as identify the driving factors and barriers to sustaining students’ participation in online gamified activity. A mobile application called JouleBug was used. It contains game elements and aims to encourage pro-environmental behaviours. Our quasi-experimental design included two university courses (as control and treatment groups) on sustainable education with 48 participants. Both groups worked with JouleBug, whereas the treatment group was also supported by their teacher’s teaching presence. To establish online teaching presence, the teacher shares the students’ leader board rankings, acknowledges the students’ achievements, and give comments and feedback on students’ activities in the chatting group twice a week. Sustainability knowledge and pro-environmental behaviour were measured through survey. Students’ performance in the gamified activities was measured through collected points in the JouleBug application. The drivers and barriers to sustaining the students’ participation in JouleBug activities were identified through focus group interviews and students’ reflection writing. We found there were significant differences in the sustainability knowledge, pro-environmental behaviour, and performance between the treatment and control groups. The Cohen’s d effect size value obtained for the treatment on sustainability knowledge, pro-environmental behaviour, and students’ performance indicates a large effect as well. Focus group interviews with the participants and the students’ reflection writings revealed that the driving factors in sustaining the participation in the gamified activities in the application are recognition by teachers and peers, competition, and sense of belonging to a group. Meanwhile, the barriers to sustaining participation in online gamification are time constraints, boredom caused by lack of social interaction, and boredom caused by activity repetition and activity’s inappropriate level of difficulty. The conclusion is the teacher plays a role as an agent in this online gamification learning context. The findings suggest that teaching presence is one of the important building blocks that encourage the students’ participation and learning in online gamification.
Providing feedback on second language (L2) writing is an essential part of a writing teacher's job. Even though each student may have different needs for and expectation of written feedback, they may not be given the chance to choose their preferred types of feedback as decisions are often made by the teachers. Motivated by this concern, this study aims to examine the current written feedback received by secondary school students in Malaysia and to reveal how they perceived the feedback. 90 students from three schools in the State of Johor were recruited as respondents and were surveyed using a self-completed questionnaire adapted from the literature. The study revealed interesting findings of erratic feedback frequency across teachers and the dominance of feedback on writing content rather than form. The participants were also found to be affected adversely emotionally despite their acknowledgment that the feedback led them to improve their writing. The study concludes by highlighting the need for a standard guideline from local education authorities to guarantee fair and equal treatment in the essay grading practice across the nation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted education and has instantaneously shifted education from being conducted predominately ‘face to face’ to being totally ‘online’. For most teachers, this unexpected teaching approach has impelled them into finding ways to provide the same quality of education to their students. One way of doing this is by adopting educational technologies in learning and teaching, including the use of augmented reality (AR) technology. AR technology has been integrated into the field of physics education. In this study, the effects of AR technology on understanding of the concepts of electricity in an online learning environment for 11th-grade students was investigated. Pretest and posttest were carried out in the control group and the experimental group. The results showed that AR technology improved understanding of electrical concepts for the students in the experimental group compared to the control group, with a very significant difference between both groups. This research contributes to the development of AR technology in education, especially in relation to the teaching and learning of abstract physics concepts.
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