| SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

Prof. Jayakaran facilitates teaching through Retrotex-E software

By Nur Azimah Ibrahim

 



SERDANG - An education expert from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Prof. Dr. Jayakaran Mukundan, created the Retrotext-E 2.0 application software to facilitate teachers in the teaching system.

"Retrotext-E 2.0 software is the latest approach to evaluate textbooks by obtaining more accurate data and develop professional teachers with methods to adapt and improve their teaching skills.

"The main purpose of this software is to apply modifications in teaching to make it more interesting and with upgrades from the previous Retrotext 1.0, it is more stable and steady," said the lecturer from the Faculty of Educational Studies, UPM.

According to Prof. Jayakaran, the evaluation of textbooks can be done by entering the data into the Retrotext 2.0 software and it will be analyzed in various aspects, especially vocabulary.

With the system, he said, teachers are able to identify strengths and weaknesses in a textbook by producing notes after the end of each session.

Prof. Jayakaran used the data triangulation concept in the assessment through ‘concordance software’ and added other instruments during its development stages.

He used games as his study materials and will stay put with the same approach in the future.

"The idea to create this software came about when I was involved in the UPM-MRSM school adoption programme in Kuala Krai, Kelantan in 2011, and I successfully managed to increase its SPM students English language proficiency.

"This research has begun since 2004 and still in the phase of improving periodically. This innovation will be more useful because it caters new functions andis more user-friendly," he said.

He described the software that won him a gold medal at the British Invention Show, London in 2009, as more user-friendly, convenient, sophisticated in helping teachers and will be copyrighted and set to be in the local and international market soon.

In conducting the research, Prof. Jayakaran had also collaborated with Hong Siew Swin and Hong Siew Theng, Masters and PhD students from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, UPM.

His teaching and learning philosophy is based solely on his ironclad principles, 'I like my imperfections and how I challanged it all; they just reinforce the idea that perfections bestowed is probably an unnecessary gift'.

As a researcher in the field of education, he would never stop creating something new and his latest offer to the table is 'Exploring Computerized Vocabulary Games Incorporating Auto-teacher and its Impact on Student Learning'.

Prof. Jayakaran obtained his Bachelor of English Studies from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), a doctorate in the same field from the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, UPM and was recently crowned as the winner of the National Academic Awards 2013 for the Applied Arts Teaching Award and Applied Social Sciences category.


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