interactive Islamic Prayer (iIP)

Abstract

The implementation of Virtual Environments has often been used within the educational domain. This study adopts a Virtual Environment (VE) setting to enhance and develop the physical aspects of teaching the Islamic prayer to primary school children, in comparison to traditional forms of teaching through a prayer book and prayer video.
An interactive teaching Software, the interactive Islamic Prayer (iIP), was designed and developed for this purpose and uses technology by Microsoft’s Microsoft Kinect 360 for Windows to demonstrate the various movements of the prayer in sequence. Through the administration of a number of questionnaires, a quantitative analysis of the participants’ learning experience were identified, as well as details over which approach the participants preferred. The questionnaires also provided a detailed insight into six areas of study from the learners’ perspective when using the various learning approaches: comprehension, learning experience, interaction, satisfaction, usability and achievement.
The results revealed a higher degree of interaction within the lesson on prayer when using the iIP compared to the traditional teaching methods, and although some were unfamiliar with using the Microsoft Kinect 360, on the whole, they found it to be fun and educational. The findings also showed that the software was able to focus on lower level thinking skills, such as recalling information and memory, as a test of the students’ knowledge on the prayer before and after using the software showed a significant improvement in comparison to the other approaches. Recommendations have been given on how to effectively implement this software within these relevant classrooms.