Abstract—This study implements a Virtual Environment
setting to enhance and develop the physical aspects of teaching
the Islamic prayer to primary school children, in comparison to
traditional forms of teaching through a prayer book and prayer
video. An interactive teaching system, the interactive Islamic
Prayer (iIP) has been developed for this purpose. Through
quantitative analysis of the participants’ learning experiences,
this study investigates which approach the participants
preferred, in terms of their comprehension, participation and
overall satisfaction.
The results revealed a higher degree of interaction within the
lesson on prayer was found using the iIP compared to the
traditional teaching methods, and although some were
unfamiliar with the X-Box 360 Kinect console, on the whole,
they found it fun and educational. The findings also showed that
the software was able to focus on lower level thinking skills such
as recalling information and memory, as a test of the students’
knowledge on the prayer before and after using the software
showed a significant improvement in comparison to the other
approaches. Recommendations have been given on how to
effectively implement this software within these relevant
classrooms.
Index Terms—Islamic prayer, kinesthetical learning, learning
preferences, virtual environments.
The authors are with the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences,
Durham University, UK (e-mail: m.a.r.farsi@durham.ac.uk,
malcolm.munro@durham.ac.uk).
Cite: M. Farsi and M. Munro, "A Comparative Study of Teaching the Islamic Prayer," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 383-387, 2016.