APPLYING AUTHENTIC LEARNING STRATEGIES IN A MULTIMEDIA AND WEB LEARNING ENVIRONMENT (MWLE): MALAYSIAN STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE

The advancements of ICT have impacted significantly on educators to utilise the technologies in their classrooms (Sivapalan & Wan Fatimah, 2010). There is also a significant move to make curriculum and content more authentic and relevant for student learning (Apple, 2008) and to allow students to become creative thinkers and problem solvers. However, there is more to utilizing information technology than merely uploading teaching materials online (Palloff & Pratt, 2001), and educators still lack the confidence in designing proper learning environments that engage and educate (Chung 2008). This paper presents a study conducted that incorporated Herrington and Kervin’s (2007) authentic learning strategies into a multimedia learning environment (MWLE) and reports on its impact on student learning.  Results showed that students reported positively towards learning in this environment and to the authentic activities in the modules, which allowed them to do well in their project. These results strongly support authentic learning strategies as a means to innovate and engage students in technology-backed 21^st century classrooms.