Faktor penambahbaikan kriteria kebolehgunaan bagi portal kerajaan Malaysia

Penggunaan internet menjadi trend baru pengguna untuk memperoleh maklumat dan pengetahuan terutamanya perkhidmatan dari agensi kerajaan. Justeru, pembangun portal perlu memberi fokus ke atas kualiti antara muka portal bagi memasti interaksi pengguna yang lancar dan fleksibel. Isu kebolehgunaan yang timbul semasa pembangunan dapat menjejas fungsi antara muka portal yang disedia. Ketidakpatuhan kepada garis panduan kebolehgunaan semasa pembangunan, rujukan yang kompleks dan tidak merangkumi kriteria kebolehgunaan sebenar menjadi punca kepada kegagalan menghasil antara muka yang boleh guna. Satu model pengukuhan kriteria kebolehgunaan dibangun sebagai langkah penambahbaikan dan garis panduan sedia ada yang dikuat kuasa diteliti bagi mengatasi isu kebolehgunaan ini. Hasil daripada penambahbaikan mengenal pasti tujuh kriteria kebolehgunaan baharu; Fungsi dan Kesesuaian, Sokongan dan Panduan, Ralat dan Pemulihan, Kawalan dan Kestabilan, Perisian dan Perkakasan, Proses Reka Bentuk dan Penilaian serta Kerahsiaan. Kriteria ini tidak disenarai sebagai kriteria wajib patuh oleh agensi penguatkuasa dan ianya dijangka mampu mempengaruhi reka bentuk kebolehgunaan portal sektor awam

21st Century Skills Mastery Amongst Science Foundation Programme Students

The rapid growing of knowledge economy that relies on the advancement of ICT has changed the trend of employment and social life. Employers in this century are looking for competitive, innovative and global employees. As a consequence, students should be prepared to acquire 21st-century skills so that they can be successful in the employment and social life. Before that, this study has examined the mastery level of the 21st-century skills amongst science foundation programme students. This study has also investigated the relationships between former school location and gender on the mastery levels of the 21st-century skills. A total of 240 students from two foundation colleges participated in this quantitative study. The findings indicated that the mastery level of the 21st-century skills was high. All subdomains of the 21st-century skills were at a high mastery level. However, economy literacy as one of digital era literacy subdomains showed a moderate level. Meanwhile, creativity as one of the inventive thinking subdomains also showed a moderate level, and interactive communication as one of effective communication subdomains also showed a moderate level. Findings also revealed that there were no significant differences between former school location and gender on the mastery levels of the 21st-century skills amongst science foundation programme students

Quantization Selection of Colour Histogram Bins to Categorize the Colour Appearance of Landscape Paintings for Image Retrieval

In the world of today, most images are digitized and kept in digital libraries for better organization and management. With the growth of information and communication technology, collection holders such as museums or cultural institutions have been increasingly interested in making their collections available anytime and anywhere for any Image Retrieval (IR) activities such as browsing and searching. In a colour image retrieval application, images retrieved by users are accomplished according to their specifications on what they want or acquire, which could be based upon so many concepts. We suggest an  approach to categorize the colour appearances of whole scene landscape painting images based on human colour perception. The colour features in the image are represented using a colour histogram. We then find  the suitable quantization bins that can be used to generate optimum colour histograms for all categories of colour appearances, which is selected based on theHarmonic Mean of the precision and recall,  also known as F-Score percentage higher saturated value. Colour appearance attributes in the CIELab colour model (L-Lightness, a and b are colour-opponent dimension) are used to generate colour appearance feature vectors namely the saturation metric, lightness metric and multicoloured metric. For the categorizations, we use the Nearest Neighbour (NN) method to detect the classes by using the predefined colour appearance descriptor measures and the pre-set thresholds.  The experimental results show that the quantization of CIELab colour model into 11 uniformly bins for each component had achieved the optimum result for all colour appearances categories

The impact of gamification on students learning engagement

Gamification is to use game elements in a non-game context to increase engagement between human and computer, on the other hand, to encourage in-demand for good behaviors in learning. This research tried to increase student engagements in learning by conducted Gamification technique especially in difficult subjects such as Programming Language courses. The previous work was shown that students dropped, failed, or withdrew from the course at rates of between 35% and 50%. Therefore the main objective of this study is to increase student engagements in learning programming subject, and also to measure the impact of game elements on student’s engagements. Finally, the findings have shown the score of game elements that have a good effect on student’s engagement in the experiment group

Evaluating Usability of Serious Games for Therapeutic Purpose: A Study of ASAH-i

Usability has been determined to be connected to achieving predetermined practical goals by identifying usability problems during the development cycle of a product or system. In order for the next and future versions of the systems to be enhanced and improved, usability flaws and errors must first be identified. On the same stroke, identifying flaws encountered by the end users will indirectly steer other developers from committing the same mistakes. This paper reveals findings from a usability assessment conducted on the serious game, which was developed for therapeutic purpose known as ASAH-i, which was custom-made to develop and encourage the perception and cognitive skills for children with speech and language delay (CSLD). Two groups of users were formed, namely, test group and control group. Twelve participants were selected which include six CSLD as participants for test group and another six normal children for the control group. In a controlled environment, observation and think-aloud methods were applied to analyse ASAH-i. The data gathered were then evaluated accordingly to the task success, time of the user assignment accomplishment, error rates, and satisfaction in regards to the utilisation of ASAH-i. The result proved that there is no profound disputes between the two corresponding groups, where almost all participants for both groups can play ASAH-i prototype effectively since no major usability issues were found. With regards to competency or efficiency, the result reveals that the control group can play ASAH-i prototype more competently and efficiently than the test group. However, it is interesting to note that both group members also succeeded to play ASAH-i with very little mistakes. This factor yields a strong base that provides towards the group members’ contentment and enjoyment, in which most group members in both teams were very much happy and satisfied with ASAH-i. With this fact in mind, we propose an endorsement or recommendation study which includes details and emphasises on future development to enhance the usability of ASAH-i

Gender-based Engagement Model for Serious Games

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has an important impact on the economy globally and in many regions. However, there is a lack of female involvement in ICT fields in many countries, thus motivating female students to take up ICT studies should be made a priority. ICT also improves learning quality and increases outcomes while allowing for easier control of learning systems. Serious Games can be used effectively for learning, and to encourage females to study Computer Science. However, engagement and motivation to play certain types of digital games are affected by gender preference factors, but few studies have looked into digital game design for females. Furthermore, most serious games with Computer Science content do not interest young adult females and the effect of social and cultural content in relation to female players’ gaming experience has not been fully explained. Hence this study identified effective serious game elements - motivational elements that influence a player to engage with digital games, effective educational game elements, female preference elements and elements that influence players to engage with the game. The result is a conceptual model for female engagement with serious games. The proposed model will be implemented in a game prototype design to increase the engagement of undergraduate females studying Computer Science

Factors Affecting FTSM Students’ Achievement in Statistics Course

AbstractIn learning a statistics course, students are forced to deal with complicated formula which makes them feel under a lot of pressure and find it difficult to understand certain concepts. Previous researches show that Faculty of Information Science and Technology (FTSM) students’ achievement is only average, nevertheless their attitude towards this course is generally positive. The question is, doesn’t the positive attitude contribute to the students’ achievement in the course? What are the other factors which really contribute towards the students’ achievement in the statistics course? Based on this inquiry, a research is carried out to investigate the factor(s) which may affect students’ achievement in the statistics course. This survey involves first-year students from the 2010/2011 session from the FTSM. The methodology of the survey is using questionnaires. Data collected is analysed using the SPSS software version 18.0. Analysis of research data is made using the chi-squared test. Findings of the research show that demographic factors such as gender and pre-university achievements do not affect the students’ achievement. Race, program of study as well as students’ entrance qualifications are among the factors which influenced their achievement. Although attitude in general does not influence achievement, affective and cognitive components however, do relate to students’ achievement

Gamification Elements for Learning Applications

Gamification technique is getting popular to be implemented in learning or training application. It is referred to the use of game elements or game thinking in a non-game context in order to increase engagement between students and learning application. Since there are many elements of games that are identified from previous works, this study focuses on game elements from Gamification technique that positively affect learning when applied to a learning application. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to identify game elements that can be gamified in a learning application; and to verify those elements by multiple users (gamers, students, and experts). Suitable game elements are identified through literature reviews. Two approaches are used to verify these elements; interview experts and administer a survey to gamers and students. The finding of this study suggests the use of a group of game elements with three aims, (1) increase the level of fun and entertainment; (2) motivate students to challenge each other; and (3) improve gaming and learning skills. In a further study, these elements will be implemented in a learning application and its effectiveness shall be tested