MULTIMEDIA COURSEWARE PACKAGE FOR LEARNING ENGLISH BASED ON LEARNING STYLES (MEL-e)

Abstract

The current advancement in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), especially in the advancement of multimedia technology, has spurred the use of computers in the education setting. The use of multimedia coursewares for teaching and learning have proved to be essential and more effective compared to conventional methods. Research have found that multimedia coursewares can help students in their learning process by attracting and engaging the learners, longer learning retention time, making learners more self reliant and proactive in their learning and self-motivated. This research aims to study the development of a multimedia courseware package based on learners` learning styles in the subject of English. The multimedia courseware package, MEL-e was developed based on two main objectives : I) developing a learners` diagnostic system (DiaMEL-e) to determine learners` learning styles to meet the needs of Form One students and ii) developing a multimedia courseware for learning English based on the theme, “What a wonderful world”, comprising of three components : grammar, composition and literature. The development of MEL-e took into consideration various aspects such as : principles of instructional design in the development of learning materials and the development methodology of a courseware; multimedia elements and the integration of learning and cognitive theories in courseware development. The Diagnostic Learning Style System (DiaMEL-e) and the multimedia courseware (MEL-e) were developed using authoring softwares; Director MX and Flash MX. The multimedia courseware consists of three main modules to meet the needs of each type of the preferred modality learning style of learners : visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning style. The evaluation of the MEL-e multimedia courseware package was conducted to test the system based on its strengths and weaknesses amongst form one students. Findings of the research showed that despite a number of weaknessess of the system, the modules of the system based on specific learners’ learning styles managed to attract the interest of learners based on their matching learning styles.