Design Approach of Malaysian Sexual Educational Courseware (MSE) for Secondary Schools

Sex education used to be a very sensitive or taboo subject matter to be taught in Malaysian schools however it has been introduced indirectly to Malaysian Secondary School and Primary School in 1989 and 1994 consecutively. This effort though appears not good enough as crime index statistics of rape cases produced in Malaysian police report showed that steady and double increment cases occur each year in 20002006. Unfortunately, 10% of the crimes involved juveniles of 18 years old and below. Realizing the social problems amongst the juveniles especially school children increases, a guideline of national sexuality education was outlined and soon after was approved by the Malaysian government. As a result, the sexual education was found as a very important subject to be taught appropriately in school. Conversely, it was not taught as an independent subject but integrated across a curriculum of family health education, science, additional science, biology, religion and moral education. An early study related to the perception of the teachers and students toward the sexual education curriculum taught in schools was carried out. The study showed that there are big gaps between the perception of the students and teachers towards several issues related to the current sexual education taught in Malaysia School. Based on the study, the conceptual model of animated approach of MSE was developed and the research framework was designed based on several learning theories and user interface design concept to address the weaknesses of commonly used pedagogies in handling the sensitive and delicate issues of the subject. In conclusion, the effort of developing the courseware is hopefully will be a solution to the Malaysian teachers and students problems in teaching and learning of the sensitive subject matter. Key-Words: Sexual education, school children, students, social problems, rape cases, crimes, educational courseware, pedagogies, usage-centered design, learning theories.