This study is drawn from a larger study on the effectiveness of the Cultural Arts Guidance Program (PBSB) in Malaysian schools. It is a joint programme between the Department of National Culture & Arts (JKKN) and the Ministry of Education Malaysia. The PBSB effectiveness study was conducted in 2013 to help JKKN improve the programme implementation and set forth the future direction of PBSB. The three most popular areas of cultural arts, namely dance, music and theatre were studied. Several assessment instruments were developed based on the objectives of PBSB and the modules used in the programme. This study focuses only on the development and re-validation of the basic knowledge test of music used in the PBSB effectiveness study. The present article discusses the background of PBSB, some important findings from the PBSB effectiveness study and the psychometric characteristics of the items in the test from the perspective of the Item Response Theory (IRT). The test of multiple-choice it.....

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As opposed to the numerous music examination systems found for western classical and popular music traditions, music examination systems for traditional music genres are fewer in comparison and exists for non-western music instruments and music genres specifically in the Indian, Chinese, Scottish and Irish music traditions. Currently, there is no mechanism for assessing musical attainment for the local music traditions of Malaysia resulting in an overemphasis on western music. The aim of the study was to investigate a structured approach for the assessment of Malaysian traditional music. This study employed both fieldwork and deskwork. Research methods included interview sessions with practitioners and academicians from Malaysia and Indonesia and observations of teaching and assessment practices and performances. Findings from this study provided guidelines for assessing performances of Malaysian traditional music that encompasses the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. The a.....

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The challenge of 21st century education demands teachers to be creative in diversifying their teaching approaches in order to engage with the students and consequently achieve better learning outcomes in their respective classrooms. One of the teaching approaches that needs to be highlighted is fun learning through the integration of music lessons with the teaching of other subjects in school. This paper is focused on the analysis of related literatures related to the application of fun learning through the integration of music lessons with other subjects in the classroom. Critical analysis was conducted on past studies, particularly journal articles retrieved from several databases especially the Google Scholar. The result of the analysis showed the positive effects of using music and singing in the teaching and learning in the classroom especially in improving students understanding and mastery of the subject content as well as in improving students long-term memory. Meanwhile the su.....

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Advancement in Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be benefited for educational purposes. This article reports on a study undertaken to evaluate the usability of a Virtual Reality (VR) Interactive Music Appreciation Module (E-Marz) for the Lower Secondary School. The study has employed the Design and Development Research (DDR) which comprised of three different phases as its methodology. E-Marz was developed systematically based on the m-ADDIE Model which include the Evaluation Phase. The objective of the evaluation phase was to measure the level of usability of the module by using the System Usability Scale Questionnaire given to the field experts and the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire given to students as the end users. The findings of the evaluation phase showed that E-Marz had obtained a high level of usability based on the expert views and the surveys on students as end users. The outcome of this study has contributed in terms of the development of an educational media .....

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