Week 5: Strategies in Designing Application Tools

Prof Rohaida proposes 7 strategies in designing application tools for Science teaching and learning (during the lecture).

Those are:

1) MBL- Micro-Computer Based Laboratory

2) Drill and practice

3) Tutorials

4) Simulation

5) Problem-solving

6) Info-retrieval

7) Educational games

From the activity, I found that most of application for science for primary school pupils give emphasis in three strategies which are: Drill and practice, simulation and educational games.

Drill and practice

Science involves learning of concepts and its consequences. Thus, drilling helps to emphasise the concept, so that pupils won't misinterpret it. Even though this sounds rigid, but, drilling is good strategy to reinforce the concepts learnt. Practice, on the other hand, work on testing the pupils whether they understood the concept or not. Besides that, drill and practice assist to form a strong basis of science concepts to primary school pupils. A strong basis of concept will help them later in learning science in secondary levels which give more emphasis on tutorials and problem-solving, which requires a more independent attitudes in learning.

Educational games

This strategy strikes the nature of children who are playful. Games are applied in most of application tools for science as they are appealing and they attract pupils to engage themselves in learning. They consist the element of question and answer.Questions are good stimuli to activate learners' mind and thinking skills. This is like an 'indirect learning' approach. By looking at the surface, some would say that pupils are playing games, but actually playing games are good to develop sense of alertness and their understanding. Thus, that's why games are used often in designing application tools for primary school pupils. 

All in all, designing application tools need a varied consideration from the psychology of the target group to the education level of the target group. A proper consideration of strategies will give a tremendous impact on the students development and interest towards learning science.