Noor Syamilah Zakaria, M. Iqbal Saripan, Alyani Ismail and Neerushah Subarimaniam
Keywords: EthoshuntTM, ethıcs education, learning method, gamification, mobile application
Abstract: Ethics is a set of moral principles that guides individuals’ behaviors. The nature of ethics education is perplexing and requires ethical competencies to navigate ethical quandaries specifically in gray areas. Furthermore, ethics education training program is often recasted as a venue to ‘learn the rules’ and it seems uninteresting. Therefore, there is an urgency to complement existing face-to-face method with more immersive and experiential-based teaching and learning method. A prototype called EthoshuntTM is developed to be utilized as an innovative approach in ethics education. It is a gamification-based mobile application integrated with elements of game functionality, mechanics, and dynamics to charter the students with learning outcomes, digitally. A survey was conducted among undergraduate students enrolled in ethics education course to examine the relationship between positive emotions, ethical competency, user experience, and mobile application usability. The researchers found strong positive relationship between user experience and mobile application usability, followed by ethical competency and mobile application usability. These findings uncovered positive impact of gamification on students’ engagement in learning ethics education. On the contrary, EthoshuntTM offers opportunities to educators to promote technology-enhanced pedagogies, increase authentic student-educator interaction, and make learning enjoyable while maximizing acquisition of ethics-related knowledge. The meaningul learning flow of EthoshuntTM, from achievement to infinite play would transform cut and dry ethics education course into meaningful contents. EthoshuntTM offers an interdisciplinary future; and concomitantly, would fulfill the current digital transformation trends in education.
