Webcoder Mobile Application for Learning Web Programming for Primary School Children

WebCoder mobile application is to be used on smartphones with Android operating systems. This mobile application is aimed to teach children range from 8 to 12 years old to learn HTML codes. The problems identified behind this project are difficulties faced by tertiary education students in learning programming and to fulfill the important need of programming in today’s world. This project is aimed to design an instructional design model for teaching web programming to school children, to develop and android-based application that comprises the designed instructional design model and to evaluate the project in terms of user acceptance. The development of this project is using ADDIE lifecycle which is an approach to Instructional Design Model consisting analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation. On top of that, this project has developed an instructional design model that covers the relevant elements for a teaching application. The development is done by using Phonegap cross platform tool. The flow of the application is designed and presented in a flowchart, and the graphical user interface (GUI) is designed according to suitability. Functionality test carried out shows a good result which means this project has nearly met success. From the User acceptance testing (UAT) performed, most of the feedbacks reflect good results in all three aspects which are performance and presentation of the application, as well as its effectiveness towards users. These results show positive feedbacks from potential end users. With a total of 28 weeks of development; starting from selection of project topic up to the testing and implementation, it is believed that the usage of mobile phones will be more beneficial especially among children, in terms of educational purposes. It will also put Malaysia on the same level with other developed countries in terms of education where programming is taught in early ages.