School of Science and Technology 科技學院
Computing Programmes 電腦學系
| Programme | Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computing |
| Supervisor | Dr. Vanessa Ng |
| Areas | E-learning Systems |
| Year of Completion | 2011 |
This project aims at developing an interactive learning system, which is named as “PHONICS FUN”, for phonics self-learners in an interesting way. The Platform will provide a certain pack of animations, voices and games to increase the attractiveness of the learning environment. Phonics is a method to help learners to read and write in English. Most of Hong Kong students do not pronounce English correctly according to phonetic rules. They either rely on memory gained from previous learning experiences or simply by guessing.
This e-learning platform is designed to be an effective approach and usable for learners. It focuses on four main areas including listening, speaking, reading and writing. The platform will provide a set of colorful and practical materials, exercises and games to help learning Phonics. Students can study by themselves whenever, wherever and whatever they like. The architecture of the platform is shown in the following:
A background investigation is carried out to review some of the current e-learning systems on phonics including the Little-prince, English Builder, Fun Fonix, and Star full. The comparison and evaluation on the chosen e-learning systems in terms of attractiveness, interaction, graphic design and effectiveness is shown in detail below:
In this part, the methodology and the development of the proposed Phonics will be elaborated. The major elements that to be included as an effective interactive learning system is shown in the following:
The system architecture of” PHONICS FUN” is based on a view-controller model and is created by Flash, PHP, CSS and Action Script. Flash will be responsible for the annimation of showing the exercises and games. Whenever clients call the system, it will process on Flash only. If the archive data stored in the database is requested, then the Flash program will call upon AMFPHP to get the database data. The model is shown below for illustration purpose:
A set of learning materials in form of an e-book model is developed in an interesting way with animations which encourage students to learn phonics. The e-book model consists of several features including bookmark function, auto play function and pronunciation function. After the model is built, developers can easily insert each page inside the model. The screen capture of the e-book model is shown in the following:
Besides the e-book, there are four additional interactive exercises in the learning tool including Vowel Match, Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) Exercises, Listening Exercises and a game of Roulette Match. The overall workflow is illustrated in the following:
The vowel match model is developed for users to practice the exercise by forming a specified vowel words. The features is listed in the following:
The demonstration of the functions are shown in the following:
MCQ Exercise Model is developed for users to practice exercises in multiple choices. The features is listed in the following:
The demonstration of the functions are shown in the following:
Listening Exercise Model is developed for users to practice listening to the pronunciation of a word and enter the correct answer. The features is listed in the following:
The demonstration of the functions are shown in the following:
The game of Roulette Match is developed for users to rotates the roulette and a word will be generated for the user to determine whether this is a word or not. The features is listed in the following:
The demonstration of the functions are shown in the following:
To investigate the users’ view on Phonics Fun, a set of questionnaire and interview have been conducted to collect users' opinion. The question focuses on both Phonics Fun interface and quality. There are fourteen primary students, two university students and two teachers have been invited to experience Phonics Fun system. The occupation of interviewees is listed below:
The next part investigates which aspect among the exercises, assessments and games the interviewees like most. Most of them like Vowel Scramble and Vowel Match, because this two parts contain game features that attract the interviewees. The overall responses are summarised below:
This part shows the statistical result of how the interviewees find themselves satisfied with the Phonics Fun's interface. It shows that more than 60% of interviewees thought that the interface is good or well done. They said that the flash animation was designed very funny and attractive. This general result of the evaluation in this part shows that the interface needs to be further variably developed, because there are still nearly 40% of interviewees thought that the interface has room for improvement. They thought that there are rather many blank areas in the interface and the use of color was not colorful enough. The overall responses are summarised below:
This part investigates how far the interviewees satisfied with the quality of Phonics Fun. More than 60% of interviewees were satisfied with the overall quality of Phonics Fun. They commented that Phonics Fun was a well designed system that has many useful functions, games and learning materials, and also the attractive animations. About 40% of interviewees thought that the quality of Phonics Fun was fair or poor. In their opinion, Phonic Fun contains too many exercises but very few games, students may easily get boring. The overall responses are summarised below:
This parts looks into the learning effect of Vowel A after using Phonics Fun. 75% of interviewees thought that after using Phonics Fun, their learning in that of Vowel A was enhanced. The image of Vowel A was strengthened in their mind. They thought that the teaching methods used in Phonics Fun were interesting and not as boring as traditional teaching methods. The overall responses are summarised below:
“PHONICS FUN” contains multimedia, set of materials, practical exercises, assessments and lists of achievement to help encourage and enhance user's self-learning. As proved by comparisons with different kinds of phonics and other related systems, it is understandable that a popular system is one which has rich materials, colourful image and animation, a great diversity of exercises and assessments of progressiveness and final product. To surmount the currently variable Phonic learning system, not only the functions mentioned above have been developed, more advance function such as the game of Roulette Match has also been built. In that sense, Phonics Fun has achieved the above requirements.
The merits of this project has been summarised in the following:
Minimize data size
Most of the components of PHONICS FUN are made by Flash, but most of the data such as sound files are not statically imported into the file. When the sound object is called, the system will only pass the sound file to the client side.
Reusable
Most of the components are built in models; teacher can easily enter a set of data to reuse the function. For example, in Vowel Scramble, as far as teachers prepare exercise title, vowel name, letters, and possible answers, the system will automatically reuse the base model to prepare for new exercises.
Updatable
An exercise management platform has been developed to add and update information and details.
After collecting users' opinion, the following describes some items which can be extended if possible in the future.
Advanced model in exercise and assessment
The model now has been set into specific format. The diversification of them is not rich enough. In advanced model, For example, teachers can choose either head, last or the middle set of letter to be filled in by students.
Sound Recognition
Developing sound recognition can help to provide more and more interactive learning tools. For example, student can follow a word to pronounce, the system will check which vowel or which part is not spoken correctly. Either score or percentage of the accuracy can be given to students.
Rich “PHONICS FUN” materials
According to the evaluation of users, they expected that the materials of PHONICS FUN to be richer. For example, if each e-book has their own main theme exercise, it makes the e-book seems more appealing.
Copyright Wu Hiu Man and Vanessa Ng 2011
S. C. Ng, Andrew Kwok-Fai Lui and H M Wu, “Phonics Fun: An Online Platform for Primary Students to Learn Phonics”, in P. Tsang, et al (Eds), Enhancing Learning through Technology: Emerging Research on ICT in Teaching and Learning, City University of Hong Kong Press, July 2011, pp. 93-110.
