Interactive Learning Application in Microbiology: The Design, Development and Usability

Traditional forms of lecturing have been used in universities and schools for hundreds of years. It is one of the methods of teaching, due to the fact that the message is delivered across a huge number of students at the same time. However, there are serious questions regarding the effectiveness and student's engagement of this conventional lecture approach because studying and memorizing the concepts from the teachers’ note is considered as an ineffective way of teaching. Presently, there are many calls to move away from the conventional lecture to interactive computer learning systems that allow students to gain a thorough understanding about a certain topic or subject. Instead of being bounded by these limitations, multimedia applications open up a new world of discovery in learning. This Interactive Microbiology application will imply the interactive learning prospect that allows the incorporation of animation, moving pictures, sounds and quizzes which extend the ability to present materials that encourage student's interaction with the subject matter. The objective of the project is to design and develop an interactive learning application to assist students for the Microbiology subject. 30 students were selected as the target users for this project whose reaction and opinions have been analyzed and evaluated.