International Journal of Education and Pedagogy (IJEAP) eISSN: 2682-8464 | Vol. 4 No. 4 [December 2022]
Journal website: http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijeap
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF MULTIMEDIA-MEDIATED PROJECT-BASED REMOTE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN
THE TERTIARY CONTEXT
Siew Pei Hwa1*, Wee Kim Peck2, Beh Hooi Ching3, Lew Hoi Len4 and Lim Jit Theam5
1 2 Faculty of Creative Industries, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Sungai Long, MALAYSIA
3 LKC Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Sungai Long, MALAYSIA
4 Institute of Chinese Studies, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Sungai Long, MALAYSIA
5 Faculty Information and Communication Technology, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kampar, MALAYSIA
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Article Information:
Article history:
Received date : 29 October 2022 Revised date : 5 November 2022 Accepted date : 15 November 2022 Published date : 11 December 2022
To cite this document:
Siew, P. H., Wee, K. P., Beh, H. C., Lew, H. L., & Lim, J. T. (2022).STUDENTS’
PERCEPTIONS OF MULTIMEDIA- MEDIATED PROJECT-BASED REMOTE LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS IN THE TERTIARY CONTEXT. International Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 4(4), 45-58.
Abstract: Education 4.0 is developed to cater the needs of Industry 4.0 by leveraging digital technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience. Education 4.0 necessitates a new approach to produce students who are well-equip with the 21st century skills that will help them to thrive in a rapidly evolving, technology saturated world, and face challenges in the workplace. Education 4.0 framework encourages the carrying out of project-driven approach that promotes ubiquitous, flexible, and self-paced learning. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has forced educational institutions all over the world to resort to remote learning scenarios. When teaching and learning were undertaken remotely on digital platforms, project-based learning (PjBL) proved to be a successful instructional model to boost students’ engagement. This research focused on the implementation of project-driven approach in learning, which enables students to participate more actively in their own learning, enhance students’ learning through interactive multimedia web projects, and promote 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity by solving problems in small groups.
The paper highlights the research findings that assessed students’ attitudes and perceptions of the PjBL learning approach for the multimedia production instruction in
1. Introduction
The 21st century is often referred to as the era of information technology. The technological revolution trends led to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) or Industry 4.0, and have a profound impact on the instructional strategies of the educational institutions. In response to the new paradigm shift in education for the needs of 4IR, higher education in the digital age must be transformed adapting to the increasingly sophisticated demands of the labour market, and the growing shortage of 21st century skills that needed in the competitive workplace. It is vital to prepare 21st-century learners to thrive in the today’s rapidly evolving world. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are striving to provide effective learning experiences to address the needs of the digitally-oriented generation of learners.
Due to increasing rate of graduates’ unemployment, employability skills of new university graduates have become a concern to universities worldwide. St. Louis (2021) noted that “college or university graduates entering the workplace are expected to possess sufficient content knowledge and be proficient in 21st century skills (i.e., communication, collaboration, problem solving, etc.).” (p. 1).
However, many employers rated today’s university graduates as deficient in such 21st century workplace skills (Alsop, 2015; St. Louis, 2021). In order to better prepare the university graduates for the needs of the rapid changing society, enabling them to hone the 21st century skills, it is crucial for the HEIs is to develop curricula that is essential to produce graduates not only with specific areas of specialisation, but more importantly, to develop graduate employability skills that are most demanding in the 21st century for them to success within the workplace (Lee & Tan, 2003 as cited in Md Saad & Ab Majid, 2014).
remote learning environments. The research employed a quantitative self-administrative questionnaire among 176 students who studied multimedia courses in a Malaysian University. The research constructs included students’
learning motivation, knowledge construction/ enhancement, teamwork and collaboration, skills and real-world relevance, as well as creativity and critical thinking skills.
The items in the questionnaire were adapted from several related past studies. The research findings reveal that the multimedia-mediated PjBL approach has positively affected student motivation in learning multimedia courses. PjBL enables students to learn deeply and develop core employability skills in a real world setting through participating interactive multimedia web projects.
Keywords: Industry 4.0, Education 4.0, project-based learning, 21st century skills, multimedia.
As the world is constantly changing, education must adapt to current global trends. Traditional education was designed to mould students into passive recipients of information or knowledge, where teachers were the only source of knowledge (Indonesia Expat, 2019). Ciolacu et al. (2017) affirmed that the traditional education methods are reaching their limit when it comes to qualifying employees for Industry 4.0 requirements. Keser and Semerci (2019) postulated that the education systems need to be overhauled to meet the qualified workforce with 21st-century skills and competences.
Correspondingly, the education system is changed from Education 3.0 to Education 4.0. Citing the work of Schildhauer, Ciolacu et al. (2017) stated that the characteristics of learning for Education 4.0 are adaptive, interactive, personalised, socialised, and electronic-based (e-learning tools are more accessible and with a good usability). The Malaysian Ministry of Education strongly believes that the initiatives taken in line with the integration of 4IR in higher education will support the learning institutions to stay relevant and competitive in the emergence of Industry 4.0.
This research focused on student learning process through interactive multimedia web projects that embedded in constructivist project-based remote learning environments, as a complement to the teacher-driven and content-laden instruction in digital classrooms. It aimed to identify influential factors, their relative importance, and how these factors affect students’ attitude in the constructivist project-based learning (PjBL) environments for multimedia production instruction to promote 21st century skills. It also assessed students’ perceptions toward the PjBL approach.
2. Education 4.0 Classroom: Infusing 21st Century in Higher Education Adopting Student- Centred and Project Based Learning Approaches
Sawant (2016) claimed that instructors focused on what they are teaching, and not on what the students are learning in the traditional classrooms. The current Multimedia Technology curriculum is overload with classroom time relying heavily on instructor-prepared lecture videos, or PowerPoint slides, where the students cannot interact with the contents in the videos/ slides, but passively view the contents. In real-world practice, unlike in the universities, problems rarely come neatly packaged within the boundaries of a single course subject, or even a single discipline (e.g. broadcasting, civil engineering, etc.). To solve real problems invariably requires pulling together material from several different subjects and disciplines, both technical (science and technology, engineering, and mathematics) and non-technical (communications, literature, law, etc.). The review of literature suggests that 21st century employment skills are best developed through hands-on and problem-based activities.
By implementing project-based learning (PjBL) which belongs to constructive approach that will enable the students-centred learning (SCL), it will facilitate students to innovatively and creatively transfer their knowledges to the real world situation (Sumarni, 2015). Fox (2016) noted that since the early 1900’s, PjBL has played a role in education starting with the forward thinking of John Dewey supporting “learning by doing.” Constructivism reflects this notion as students learn best when they are constructing meaningful products that deepen their engagement.
With the technological advances and the demands of highly skilled profession in the digital world, there is a paradigm shift in higher education from teacher-centred instruction to student-centred learning (SCL) approach to enhance the learning experience. Coombs and Wong (2000, as cited in Wong et al., 2010) affirmed that the role of students shifts from passive receptors of information and dependent learner to being an active and independent learner adopting the SCL. Romanus and Ifenyinwa (2020) stated that SCL approach makes learning more effective than teacher-centred instruction since students could actively involve in the teaching-learning process. The instructor in a constructivist learning context is also expected to cease from their role of a content expert to a facilitator, which focuses on guiding rather than teaching the learner. This leads to the evolution of new concepts and innovative teaching techniques that will enable the cultivation of 21st-century learning to support knowledge acquisition in a digital world. It helps students to develop higher-order thinking, creativity and innovation, communication, and collaboration skills that are important in today’s digitally interconnected world, and are critical to ensure 21st century readiness for every student (Fox, 2016).
3. Research Methods 3.1 Research Instrument
A survey questionnaire that contained a total of 45 items with 5 research constructs was constructed as the main instrument in this research. It aimed to gauge students’ overall attitudes toward the learning of multimedia production in an interactive multimedia web project. The research constructs include students’ learning motivation, knowledge construction/ enhancement, teamwork and collaboration, skills and real-world relevance, as well as creativity and critical thinking skills. These items were adapted from related past studies (Neo, 2003; Neo, Neo & Tan, 2007; Neo & Neo, 2009).
All the respondents were asked to read the statement of each item and chose their answers based on a 5-Likert scale ranged from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The questionnaire also comprises an open response question for each construct which gleaned comments from students to elicit more in depth feedback on their attitudes toward the project. These open ended comments are at the end of each research construct and students are encouraged asked to read each item and chose their answers based on a 5-point to be candid and honest with their feedback. These comments are useful to gauge the individual student's inner feelings toward the development of the multimedia project and working in a group to complete it.
A preliminary study was carried among 40 students to pilot-test the survey questionnaire for its internal consistency before the empirical studies were undertaken. The data analysis for the preliminary study was conducted to find out the reliability of items in the questionnaire. Many studies (e.g., Andersson et al. 2022; Sideridis et al., 2018; Taber 2018; Trizano-Hermosilla & Alvarado, 2016; Ursachi et al., 2015) asserted that Coefficient (or Cronbach’s) alpha () is the most widely used measure of internal consistency reliability in research projects. As stated by Tavakol and Dennick (2011), Cronbach’s alpha was developed by Lee Cronbach in 1951 that provides a measure of an internal consistency of a scale or a test, ranging from 0 to 1. The reliability of a scale or test refers to the degree of measurement error in a test (Frick et al., 2010; Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). According to Taber (2018), Cronbach’s alpha is generally used to demonstrate if a scale or test that is developed for a research project is fit for its purpose.
There were different reports about the good values of alpha, ranging from 0.80 to 0.95 (Taber, 2018;
Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). Said (2018, as cited in Nawi et al., 2022) and Shi et al. (2012, as cited in Raharjanti et al., 2022) stated that the Cronbach's alpha values of 0.60-0.80 are considered as an acceptable level of reliability. Nunnally and Bernstein (1994, as cited in Nawi et al., 2022) revealed that a value of 0.70 or greater for Cronbach’s alpha indicates satisfactory reliability, whereas Ursachi et al. (2015) noted that the value of 0.80 or higher indicating a very good level. Citing past studies, Jain and Chetty (2021) suggested that the values of 0.70-0.90 represents high reliability, and the value of 0.90 and above indicates excellent reliability.
In this research, a reliability test was carried out using Cronbach’s alpha on the Student’s Attitude in Multimedia Project Scale (SAMProS) to measure the internal consistency of the survey questions.
The SAMProS had demonstrated a high level of internal consistency and reliability among items in which the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of all the five research constructs scored over 0.80 (0.899- 0.959), with an overall internal consistency of 0.975 satisfied the requirement of survey reliability.
The reliability test results reveal good strength of association for the Cronbach’s alpha value for the 45 items as stated in Table 1. The results of Cronbach’s analysis show that the SAMProS were well- constructed and reliable.
Table 1: Cronbach’s Alpha (α) Coefficient for SAMProS
Research Construct Items Cronbach’s Alpha (α) Coefficient
Learning Motivation 10 0.900
Knowledge Construction/ Enhancement 8 0.899
Teamwork and Collaboration 15 0.959
Skills and Real-World Relevance 7 0.904
Creative and Critical Thinking 5 0.901
Total 45 0.975
3.2 Research Samples
Several surveys had been administered among 230 students who had had enrolled in any of the multimedia courses in four different programmes at a Malaysian university. A total of 182 questionnaires were returned. However, only 176 copies of completed questionnaires were usable with no missing values. This correlates to a response rate of 76.5%.
Figure 1 summaries of the respondents’ demographic data, i.e., gender, age, year of study, and programmes of study. As shown in Figure 2, there were 58 males N = (33%) and 118 females (67%) participated in the surveys. Majority of them (73.3%) aged between 20 and 21, and the rest were either aged below 20 (15.3%) or above 21 (11.4%) and above. Besides, Figure 2 also reveals that 48.3% (N = 85) of the respondents were in Year 1, followed by 14.3% of them (N = 84) in Year 1, and 4.0% of students (N = 7) in Year 3 and above. Apart from that, there were 72 Broadcasting students (40.9%) partcipated in the research, followed by 63 Corporate Communication students (35.8%), 30 Media & Creative Studies students (17%), and 11 Digital Animation students (6.3%).
Figure 1: Research Samples’ Demographic Data
3.3 Research Procedure
The empirical study was conducted among 230 students from the four programmes at a Malaysian university who had taken any of the four multimedia courses across four different trimesters (i.e., October 2020 through January 2022). The learning objective for these four courses was mainly to acquire multimedia and web development skills through the creation of group-based interactive multimedia web-based application authored in Adobe Dreamweaver. Students were free to use any third party software to enhance their final prototypes of web applications.
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has posed great challenges for all levels of education worldwide with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching and learning were undertaken remotely on digital platforms. Each multimedia course consisted of 56-hour online lectures, tutorials and consultations. The interactive multimedia web projects were focused around an authentic setting context. Students worked in groups of three to four members to design, develop and implement the prototypes of web applications and would be responsible for all the decisions made in the 5-phase Multimedia Development Process (MDP) in constructivist project-based remote learning environments. The MDP is a development method which outlines students’ interactive multimedia web development process from the ideation of the project in the beginning, to its implementation.
The MDP includes the following five phases: Phase 1- Project Initiation; Phase 2- Design; Phase 3- Create Multimedia Content; Phase 4- Multimedia Authoring; and Phase 5- Project Delivery and Oral Presentation.
Throughout the 56-hour course, students are motivated to define and analyse the problems or issues, evaluate options and make decision. Lecture, oral presentation, and other instructional methods such as in-class exercises, etc. are used to complement the case method and project works. All the students will play active roles in their project development processes. The multimedia-oriented projects
encourage students’ active participation and involvement. At the end of each trimester, the multimedia-mediated project-based remote learning environments were evaluated via structured questionnaire surveys which aimed to find out students’ attitudes toward the learning of multimedia production adopting project driven approach. Students were required to fill out survey questionnaires at the end of the project development to reflect on their learning and performances after the project experience.
3.4 Data Analysis
The collected data was analysed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) software. Data analysis involved the coding of data and interpreting the results. The analysis includes both descriptive and inferential analysis. The researchers used descriptive analysis to analyse the frequency and percentage of the respondents’ demographic data, and their responses on the 45 items of SAMProS in the questionnaire. Inferential statistical techniques such as multiple regression analysis was used to test the following hypotheses formulated at the early stage of the research:
H1: There exists influential factors that have significantly affected students’ attitude in the constructivist project-based remote learning context for multimedia production instruction in promoting 21st century skills.
H2: The students’ have positive perceptions toward the constructivist project-based learning context for multimedia production instruction in promoting 21st century skills.
4. Results and Discussion
The responses from the surveys on students’ perceptions toward this research can be categorised into five areas as follows:
a. Learning Motivation (LM): This factor contained items that measured students’ motivation satisfaction and enjoyment attitudes toward their project.
b. Knowledge Construction/ Enhancement (KCE): This factor contained items that measured the students’ perception of their knowledge construction process after the project was completed.
c. Teamwork and Collaboration (TC). This factor contained items that measured students’
perceptions towards working together in a group and their collaborative effort in completing their multimedia project.
d. Skills and Real-World Relevance (SRWR): This factor contained items that attempted to gauge students’ attitudes and perceptions toward the skills they acquired during the development of the project, and their attitudes toward applying their acquired skills to the real-world. These skills include communication and presentation skills, multimedia technology skills, and so forth.
e. Creative and Critical Thinking Skills (CCTS): This factor contained items that measured students’ attitudes and perceptions on their acquisition of critical thinking and creativity skills.
Results of the surveys showed that all the 45-item measured the five research constructs yielded mean scores of 3.88 and above, indicating very favourable and positive responses from the students in this the project-based learning (PjBL) environment. The research findings shows that students were enthusiastic about the project and were positive in their attitudes toward the group-based interactive multimedia web project (i.e., the mean scores of the items ranged from 3.88 to 4.18) as shown in
Table 2, as well as their use of web production skills and multimedia technology in the constructivist PjBL environment.
As can be seen in Table 2, results of the descriptive analysis show that students were very favourable toward the knowledge and skills acquisition related constructs such as ‘Knowledge Construction/
Enhancement’ construct (mean scores of 8 KCE items ranging from 4.13 to 4.18), following by
‘Creative and Critical Thinking Skills’ construct (mean scores of 5 CCTS items ranging from 4.05 to 4.13), and ‘Skills and Real-World Relevance’ (mean scores of 7 SRWR items ranging from 4.01 to 4.18). Besides, the research findings reveal that students’ learning motivation levels in doing the project and their teamwork and collaboration among members were quite high in which the mean scores of the 10 LM items ranging from 3.89 to 4.14, and the 25 TC items ranging from 3.88 to 4.15.
Table 2: Mean Scores of the Surveyed Factors
Factor Items Mean Scores
(Std. Dev.)
Range of Mean Scores for Each Item
Learning Motivation (LM) 10 4.01 (0.563) 3.89 - 4.14
Knowledge Construction/ Enhancement (KCE) 8 4.12 (0.581) 4.13 - 4.18 Teamwork and Collaboration (TC) 15 4.03 (0.722) 3.88 - 4.15 Skills and Real-World Relevance (SRWR) 7 4.07 (0.574) 4.01 - 4.18 Creative and Critical Thinking Skills (CCTS) 5 4.13 (0.581) 4.05 - 4.13
Further, a factor analysis was performed and all the five factors yielded means of 4.01 and above as shown in Table 2, indicating that students either "Agreed" or "Strongly Agreed" with the items in the survey questionnaire. The results demonstrate very favourable and positive responses from the students in PjBL environment. The research findings indicate that students were enthusiastic about the project and were positive in their attitudes toward the group-based interactive multimedia web project (i.e., the mean scores of items of each factor ranged from 3.88 to 4.18), as well as their use of multimedia technology and web production skills in the constructivist PjBL environment. These factors were also significantly correlated with multimedia development (Table 3).
Table 3: Correlations Results Between Multimedia Development (Dependent Variable) and Research Constructs (Independent Variables)
Correlations
LM KCE TC SRWR CCTS
Multimedia Development Achievement
Pearson
Correlation 0.672** 0.615** 0.461** 0.627** 0.568**
Sig (2-tailed) 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.004
N 176 176 176 176 176
** Significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed)
As can be perceived through Table 3, students have positive attitudes and perceptions toward the constructivist project-based learning environment, where the mean scores for all the five research constructs, i.e., Learning Motivation (LM) factor, Knowledge Construction/ Enhancement (KCE) factor, Teamwork and Collaboration (TC) factor, Skills and Real-World Relevance (SRWR) factor, and Creative and Critical Thinking Skills (CCTS) factor were above 4.00.
Besides, the research findings in Table 3 also reveal that students’ positive attitudes toward developing web applications in multimedia projects (i.e. Multimedia Development Achievement) were positively related to students’ learning motivation towards their project (LM: r = 0.672, p <
0.001)), their perceptions about applying their skills in the real-world (SRWR: r = 0.627, p < 0.001), their knowledge construction or enhancement after completing the projects (KCE: r = 0.615, p <
0.001), their perceptions toward the creative and critical thinking skills that they acquired from doing the projects (CCTS: r = 0.568, p< 0.001), as well as their teamwork and collaborative effort (TC: r = 0.461, p < 0.001).
In addition, a multiple regression analysis was performed to determine how much the influential factors (i.e., LM, KCE, TC, SRWR and CCTS) had influenced the students’ perceptions of developing web applications in multimedia projects within constructivist project-based remote learning environment. These results are explained in Table 4 through Table 6 (b).
Results of the model summary of the performed (R Square) of the students’ perceptions towards the learning multiple regression analysis (see Table 4) show that 68% environment was explained by their learning motivation, knowledge construction/ enhancement, teamwork and collaboration, skills and real-world relevance, as well as creative and critical thinking skills. Furthermore, the results of the ANOVA analysis as shown in Table 5 are very significant (F = 72.452, p = 0.000), at a 95%
confidence level, indicating a good fit, since these factors were able to explain the outcome. These findings are considered important as they partially explained that students’ positive attitudes and perceptions in developing multimedia projects in the project-based remote learning environment were due to their ability to work in groups, were motivated, acquired technical and presentation skills and were able to apply them in future projects.
The results in Table 6 (a) reveal that the Learning Motivation (LM) factor (t = 5.650, p = 0.000) played the most significant role in a multimedia mediated constructivist project-based learning environment, followed by Skills and Real-World Relevance (SRWR) factor (t = 3.446, p = 0.001), and Teamwork and Collaboration (TC) factor (t = 3.194, p = 0.002). Montgomery (2001, as cited in Joshi, 2012) noted: “If any of the VIF values exceeds 5 or 10, it implies that the associated regression coefficients are poorly estimated because of multicollinearity”. The general rule of thumb is that VIFs exceeding 10 are signs of serious multicollinearity requiring correction (The Pennsylvania State University, 2018). Hence, the results in Table 6 (b) show that there was no significant multicollinearity, as the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) is below 10, indicating that multi-collinearity was not serious.
Overall, the results show that the LM, SRWR, and TC were integral parts to motivate students’
learning to successfully completing group-based multimedia projects in constructivist PjBL environments, and this resulted in their positive perceptions of the research. Apart from that, although both KCE and CCTS are important factors, but they did not play a significant role as LM, SRWR, and TC to influence students’ attitude towards this constructivist PjBL environment. The findings clearly show that working as a group was a challenging task for these students and some students were experiencing obstacles to group management and group collaboration. Many students reported that the biggest challenges to them were in having to solve the conflicting ideas of the groups, and the lack of time due to packed schedules.
Table 4: Results of Multiple Regression Analysis Model Summaryb
Model R R Square Adjusted R Square
Std. Error of the Estimate
Durbin- Watson
1 0.825a 0.681 0.671 4.643 1.831
a. Predictors: (Constant), CCTS, TC, LM, KCE, SRWR b. Dependent Variable: Multimedia Development
Table 5: Results of ANOVAa analysis ANOVAa
Model
Sum of
Squares df Mean Square F Sig
1 Regression 7808.469 5 1561.694 72.452 0.000b **
Residual 3664.323 170 21.555
Total 11472.792 175
a. Dependent Variable: Multimedia Development b. Predictors: (Constant), CCTS, TC, LM, KCE, SRWR
** Significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Table 6 (a): Coefficientsa from the Regression Analysis Coefficientsa
Model
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta t Sig.
1 (Constant) 20.73 6
2.858 7.255 0.000
LM 5.393 0.955 0.375 5.650 0.000**
KCE 0.873 1.177 0.063 0.742 0.459
TC 1.865 0.584 0.166 3.194 0.002**
SRWR 4.329 1.256 0.307 3.446 0.001**
CCTS 0.728 1.192 0.052 0.611 0.542
a. Dependent Variable: Multimedia Development
** Significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed)
Table 6 (b): Coefficientsa from the Regression Analysis (cont’d) Coefficientsa
Model
Correlations Collinearity Statistics Zero-order Partial Part Tolerance VIF 1 (Constant)
LM 0.742 0.398 0.245 0.426 2.347
KCE 0.705 0.057 0.032 0.263 3.796
TC 0.557 0.238 0.138 0.693 1.443
SRWR 0.748 0.255 0.149 0.236 4.229
CCTS 0.684 0.047 0.026 0.257 3.886
a. Dependent Variable: Multimedia Development
The research findings have corroborated the following hypotheses (i.e. H1 and H2) that were set at the early stage of the research. The research findings prove that there existed influential factors such as LM, KCE, TC, SRWR and CCTS in the constructivist PjBL environments toward multimedia development in promoting 21st century skills with mean scores of 4.00 for all the five factors. Further, all these five factors had positive relation with students’ multimedia development achievement.
Specifically, LM, TC and SRWR factors had significantly affected students’ attitudes and perceptions on the constructivist project-based remote learning context for multimedia production instruction in promoting 21st century skills such that needed in the workplaces.
The results of this research support the idea that PjBL has positively influenced students’ motivation, promote their collaboration skills, and enhance their multimedia knowledge/ skills acquisition.
Furthermore, student responses in the surveys at the end of their implementation of projects reveal that the students’ perceptions toward the constructivist PjBL are very positive. This is consistent with the study of Shin (2018) in which Shin’s study showed that the project has had a great impact on students' motivation in English learning, and the perceptions of students toward PjBL were very positive. The research findings are also in line with the study of Adams (2018), which reported that the participants (both teachers and students) positively perceived the PjBL as an effective and successful method in EFL (English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Also, the findings are strengthened by the study of Insyasiska et al. (2017), which indicated that the PjBL was able to increase student motivation, creativity, critical thinking, and cognitive 28.9%. Similar results are found in the study Saenab et al., (2017, as cited in Indriani, et al., 2021), which indicated that the implementation of PiBL was able to encourage the collaboration and communication among university students.
The similar research finding was also found in the study by Carter (2016). The study of Carter (2016) revealed that PjBL is proved to be effective in enhancing students’ achievement in the mathematics courses. Carter asserted that the implementation of PjBL pedagogy, which incorporates all of the 21st century skills enable students to become lifelong learners, and empowering them to become skilled and adaptable workforce in today's fast-paced global economy.
5. Conclusion
From the research findings, it can be concluded that students are active learners in the constructivist project-based remote learning environment, conduct activities for promoting learning, collaborate with peers during the learning process, take responsibility in the learning environment, free to express their ideas and thoughts about classroom environment, etc. The research findings show that the constructivist teaching approaches positively affect student motivation to learn multimedia production. This is possibly due to the fact that these students were able to express their ideas with a combination of media elements and bring to the project innovative ideas harnessed from their group discussions.
Also, it is found that students were able to develop higher order creative and critical thinking skills through their research activities and the translation of their ideas from the wireframes/ mock-ups to the web prototypes. Besides, students would have to develop their communication and presentation skills, effectively select the appropriate information to display in the web application. Besides,
through the interactive multimedia web projects, students would be able to learn about project planning and rule-of-thumbs to develop a good web application, select the appropriate software application for their multimedia development, practice important skills in a real world setting, and improve their technical skills in multimedia technology and incorporate interactive features into their presentations. The findings postulate that students accepted that digital technologies enhanced authentic teaching-learning process and promoted meaningful learner-engagements in the process of learning in line with challenges of the 4IR.
6. Acknowledgement
The work is part of the research that is supported by UTAR Research Fund 2020 Cycle 1. The authors would also like to express their thanks to the students at a Malaysian University for their involvement in the evaluation study.
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