2. Literature Review
Book-based learning is one of the conventional learning environments where students take notes and teachers
give lectures. Traditional lectures and textbooks basically involve only one-way of communication which is from
instructor to students (Preszler et al., 2007).
Few students are able to learn better in the traditional structure of university science courses and as a result,
universities are producing graduates who are unable to apply a meaningful understanding of science subjects.
According to Gregory and Chow (2008), it was recognized that students must be able to understand the basic
concepts in biology particularly those found in Microbiology. A major challenge to biology educators is to teach
these processes so that students can comprehend and understand their complexity (McClean et al., 2005). Based
on McClean et al. (2005) which had conducted similar research on the topic of Biology, student which heard
lecture augmented with the animation followed by an individual study with application produced significantly
better result.
In addition, this subject required a lot memorizing process where some students are not good in memorizing
and they need some tools to help them to memorize. Many students find that the Microbiology course is quite
difficult to learn, understand and memorize especially the concepts and the processes. According to Amirruddin
(2007), studying and memorizing information from the text books and teacher’s notes are no longer an effective
way to gain a thorough understanding about a certain topic or subject.
2.1. Behaviourism Learning Theory
Behavioural Psychology is mainly concerned about how a person’s behaviour results from the stimuli both in
the environment and within themselves which then allows the researchers to utilize the results to learn a great
deal about their behaviours, the effect of environment towards them, how they learn new behaviours, and what
motivates them to change or remain the same.
Reinforcement is one of the components in behaviourism theory. It is any event that strengthens the behaviour
it follows. There are positive reinforces which include positive punishments and negative reinforces which
include negative punishments. Positive reinforcement is favourable events that are presented after the behaviour
which the response or behaviour is strengthened by a praise, a gift or reward. Negative reinforcement involves
the removal of an unfavourable event after the display of behaviour which the response is strengthened by the
removal of something considered unpleasant. In general, reinforcement’s consequences strengthen the behaviour
that led to it, and it weakens that behaviour by punishment (Staddon & Niv, 2008).
An example is a quiz that involves reinforcements where once the user enters the correct answer, praise will
be given such as “Congratulations. Good works” but if the user enters the wrong answer, unfavourable event will
occur such as a deduction of marks or repeat the level again. This method is important to keep the user motivated