Enhancing Pre-Schoolers' Learning Motivation in Jawi Subject Through Game-Based Learning Application

This study examines whether the "Dunia Jawi" mobile game application can increase preschoolers' motivation to learn Jawi, the Malay script written in Arabic letters, which has been losing ground in Malaysian primary education partly because of unengaging instructional materials. Using a quantitative one-group pre-experimental pretest-posttest design, the researchers tested 32 six-year-old preschoolers from two classes at a single preschool on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, measuring motivation with a reduced version of Keller's Instructional Materials Motivation Survey grounded in the ARCS model (attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction). Motivation scores rose significantly after the intervention, with the posttest mean of 43.50 exceeding the pretest mean of 31.47 (p = .000), and the gains were significant for attention, confidence, and satisfaction.

The relevance construct showed no significant difference between the book-based and app-based conditions (p = .079), which the authors attribute to children not perceiving the content as connected to their everyday lives. The authors also note that the app was built around Prensky's digital game elements, such as rules, challenges, feedback, and rewards, and was tailored to a level suitable for touchscreen use by children aged five to six. Interpretation is limited by the small, purposively sampled single-site design, the absence of a control group, and the restricted availability of tablets in schools, which meant students could use the application mainly at home as reinforcement. The authors recommend extending similar applications to older learners and strengthening the real-world relevance of the content in future work.