Development of arabic rhetoric application based on dini and tahfiz integrated curriculum via open online courses / Mohamad Nor Amin Samsun Baharun

Rhetoric is one of the beautiful arts of expression in Arabic. Unfortunately, many students who learn Arabic rhetoric cannot acquire it well due to the lack of exciting materials. Past studies revealed that the mastery level of Arabic rhetoric among secondary school students is moderate. The main issue is that teaching materials are not available for students to comprehend Arabic rhetoric lessons more effectively Therefore, developing an Arabic rhetoric application through a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), namely the ‘e-Retorik Arab’ was required to facilitate students’ understanding of the concept of Arabic rhetoric more effectively. The objectives of the study are categorised into three main objectives: a) to analyse the needs of students’ for an Arabic rhetoric application, b) to design and develop an Arabic rhetoric application through open online courses, and c) to evaluate the usability of the Arabic rhetoric application through open online courses. This study employed the Arabic Rhetoric Learning Theory by Toemah (1989), the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning by Mayer (2001), and the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy by Krathwohl and Anderson (2001). This mixed-method study aims at achieving three objectives: (1) To analyze the needs of students on Arabic rhetorical application, (2) To design and develop Arabic rhetorical application through an open online course, and (3) To evaluate the usability of Arabic rhetorical application through open online courses.This study is a design and development research (DDR) that applied the ADDIE model with some modifications, comprising of three phases: Phase 1: Analysis, Phase 2: Design and Development, and Phase 3: Implementation and Evaluation. The instruments used for the qualitative methods were a comprehensive literature review, documents, and semi-structured written interviews. The quantitative data instruments were three questionnaires collected and analysed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS). The target population sample of this study was Form 4 students who have completed learning Arabic rhetoric from five selected Government Aided Religious Schools (SABK). Thus, 148 respondents were chosen for purposive sampling and seven experts were chosen from local universities for expert validation. The experts' validation showed that the ‘e-Retorik Arab’ application was appropriate. The mean was recorded from the experts (M = 4.45) and users (M = 4.03) at a high level of interpretation. The experts' structured-written interviews also showed that the content of the application complied with the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and the inductive teaching method proposed by Toemah (1984). The multimedia presentation elements, which include graphics, made students understand the lesson more in addition to animated videos and background music. Meanwhile, most students found the application to be practical to understand Arabic rhetoric clearly. Besides that, the teachers also encouraged them to use it, so the exercises enhanced their understanding of Arabic rhetoric. Therefore, they would make the application an additional reference and encourage friends who study Arabic rhetoric to use it. In addition, the students loved the animated videos that had a clear display. The study concludes that the ‘e-Retorik Arabic’ was useful and enhanced their understanding of Arabic rhetoric.