The effects of teaching primary school children the Islamic prayer in a virtual environment

The implementation of Virtual Environments has often been used within the educational domain. This study adopts a Virtual Environment (VE) setting for the specific purpose of teaching the Islamic prayer to primary school children. The interactive Islamic Prayer (iIP) system has been designed for the Xbox 360 Kinect and covers the various movements of the prayer in sequence. In doing so, the objective is to evaluate whether it would facilitate a "user-friendly" experience for the students, through direct interaction of mimicking the displayed movements during the prayer. Through a quantitative analysis of the participants' learning experiences, this study investigates the importance of designing and developing training software for the purpose of teaching the Islamic prayer, particularly in relation to those that adopt a Virtual Environment setting. As part of the data analysis, questionnaires were given to the participants to evaluate the usability, usefulness and overall learning experience of the iIP software. The results revealed participants held a positive perception and experience towards the iIP software and felt that this approach (learning by doing) was effective in helping them memorise the sequential prayer movements.