(375)AN EFFECTIVENESS STUDY ON INCORPORATING GAGNE’S NINEEVENTS IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING EASY-TO-READ TEXT ATCENTRE FOR FOUNDATION STUDIES, INTERNATIONAL ISLAMICUNIVERSITY OF MALAYSIA

摘要

Centre for Foundation Studies is a direct feeder to the undergraduate program at International IslamicUniversity of Malaysia (IIUM). SEF1514/ IFF1444 – C Programming is one of the required subjects forSciences Programme students to pass. This paper discusses the identified challenges that lead tounfavourable performance among the foundation students who enrolled in C Programming course,and the proposed method to overcome these. Few scholars mentioned that students’ mainweaknesses in programming subjects are their lack of problem solving capability and insufficientanalytical thinking skill [1] & [2]. Mitra, in her work, mentioned that most students feel thatprogramming is a challenging intellectual exercise [3]. In addition to the above-mentioned problemswith learning computer programming, we also found out that foundation students have difficult timedealing with the materials used for the course. To them, computer programming textbooks are tooburdensome, and too complex to understand. From the study conducted here at IIUM, good andcomprehensive materials seemed to be costly, and most of the students (majority are non-computerrelated majors) opted not to purchase the materials, and relied mostly on lectures during classmeetings. As an initiative to improve the students’ performance in the course, a group of lecturersteaching C Programming at the centre came out with an Easy-to-Read textbook that followed closelyRobert Gagne’s Nine Events of Instructions. Gagne is considered to be the foremost researcher andcontributor to the systematic approach to instructional design and training. Gagne and his followersare known as behaviourists, and their focus is on the outcomes - or behaviours - that result fromtraining [4]. After two semesters of using this Easy-to-Read textbook for conducting the course at thiscentre, a positive improvement to students’ results was observed. This paper analyses students’results for the course at IIUM before the introduction of the Easy-to-Read textbook and after it wasintroduced. Results from survey conducted on the students in evaluating the effectiveness of Gagne’sInstructional Design approach used in the Easy-to-Read textbook, will also be tabulated anddiscussed. At the end of this paper, suggestions for further improvement to the Easy-to-Read textbookwill be provided as a continuous effort to enhance students’ learning experience in C Programmingcourse.