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Conventional classroom teaching and learning of programming tends to be didactic, which is usually tends to be monotonous and less interesting. In learning programming – a subject that is deemed extremely challenging to master – such a situation can have a serious repercussion in that students can easily become unmotivated and demoralized to learn. As such, students need to use relevant learning tools that can stimulate and motivate them to learn such a course. Of late, many researchers have started using online game-based learning (GBL) tools to improve students’ motivation and performance. Invariably, most of the studies mainly focused on GBL tools to move avatars. As such, this study focuses on programming as the activities in such a game. In this study, the researchers used the prototyping model to develop an online GBL application called Prog-GBL by integrating the elements of mastery learning approach and ARCS model to help motivate students in learning programming. The evaluation of the Prog-GBL was carried out through a survey involving 30 students from one public university in Perak, Malaysia. The research findings showed that the use of such an online learning tool helped improve students’ motivation in learning programming. More revealingly, the four elements of ARCS, namely attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction were highly rated by the students, suggesting that the use of Prog-GBL can motivate students to learn the subject matter.

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Admittedly, the teaching and learning of programming courses in the computer science and information technology programs have been extremely challenging. Currently, most instructors depend on either the problem-solving technique or the metacognitive technique to help students develop a range of cognitive skills, including metacognitive skills, which are important in the development of a strong computational thinking skill required for 21st-century learning. Studies focusing on the practices of instructors in using both techniques are scarce, thus motivating the researchers to carry out this study. This study was based on a qualitative approach involving a case-study design in which five (5) male and five (5) female instructors were selected from 10 pre-university centers in Malaysia as the respondents and participants in an intervention program. The research instruments used were an interview checklist and intervention guidelines. As anticipated, the findings showed that the activities of each technique could only help students develop certain sub-skills of the computational thinking skill, thus underscoring the need for instructors to integrate both techniques in their teaching practices. Thus, it could be reasoned that using either the metacognitive technique or the problem-solving technique alone would not be sufficient to help students develop strong computational thinking skills, as each technique has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it becomes imperative for instructors to leverage the strengths of both techniques by integrating both of them in the teaching and learning of programming courses.

This paper reports the partial findings of a survey that was carried out in the analysis phase of an ongoing research for the development of a prototype of a Social Networking Site (SNS) to support teaching and learning in secondary schools. For the initial phase of the study, a quantitative research method was used based on a survey involving 383 respondents drawn from two rural and two urban schools in Selangor, Malaysia. The main objectives of the survey were to investigate factors related students' use of SNSs namely the frequency of use, the types of SNSs used, reasons for using SNSs and the types of relationships established in the social networking. Data were analysed in the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Findings of the research show that majority of the students were frequent users, spending quite substantially in the virtual sessions mostly for leisure rather than for educational purposes. In addition, the SNSs were used almost exclusively for peer interactions where interactions with their teachers were very minimal These findings underscore the design and development of a dedicated, content-specific SNS to promote a focused use of SNSs for academic purposes involving both pupils and teacher.

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