Developing Teaching Multimedia to Improve Elementary Students’
Understanding of Fraction Concepts
Andhin Dyas Fitriani
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Teaching multimedia, students’ understanding.
Abstract: This research work was focused on developing teaching multimedia to improve understanding about fraction
concepts. Students’ understanding about a concept may be influenced by their prior knowledge. In order for
the students to construct and understand fraction concepts correctly, interactive multimedia are required to
stimulate their understanding. The study involved 2 teachers and 30 students. Thus, experimental research
was applied in the study that started with the development of learning media for the students. The result of
the study shows that the understanding of fractional material through multimedia learning is increased. The
utilization of this interactive media improved students’ understanding about fraction concepts.
1 INTRODUCTION
Tony Buzan (in Mansur, 2008) puts forward that
learning at the elementary school level is analogous
to building a house of cards. Each card the house is
built upon should be steadily positioned before
stacking a new layer of cards. An unsteady or
wrongly positioned card may result in the partial or
even total collapse of the house.
As a matter of fact, many elementary school
teachers, because of their position as a class teacher,
have no choice but to teach mathematics. Hence, the
process of mathematics teaching, especially in upper
grades (4 to 6), is very abstract. As a result,
mathematics is not thoroughly taught. The teachers
only teach the parts that they know, leaving out other
parts they don’t. This is, among others, what makes
many students flunk their mathematical reasoning.
They become frustrated and demotivated in learning
mathematics (Mansur, 2008).
A three-dimensional model expressed by
Cockroft (1982, cited from Collin, 1988, in Turmudi,
2008) developed three main issues: mathematics as a
subject matter, methods as the learning material
delivery strategies, and students as the subjects who
study the learning materials. Cockroft situated
mathematics in a continuum line, from the concrete
on the left and abstract on the other side. As for the
teaching method, Cockroft put it on the left and
textbook oriented on the other side. Cockroft put
students as objects, as the tabula rasa that should be
drilled with questions, on the top. While students as
subjects, whose interests, needs, and psychological
development condition should be taken into account,
are put on the lower end of the continuum.
By utilizing the Cockcroft model, it can be seen
how and what mathematical material is taught in
Indonesia. The educational situation in Indonesia is
like the point on the upper left corner of the Cockcroft
model (octant 4), meaning that mathematics is viewed
as an abstract concept, that it is rigid (not applicable),
textbook oriented, teacher centered, and that the
students are positioned as ranking objects, not as
teaching objects whose interests and potentials are
worthy of consideration. This way, mathematics
becomes a ‘dead’ subject, and so does its teaching
strategy (Turmudi, 2008).
Fitriani, A.
Developing Teaching Multimedia to Improve Elementary Students’ Understanding of Fraction Concepts.
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 1, pages 441-445
ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
441

Figure 1: Figure of Cockroft’s Teaching Model
(Cockroft, 1982; Collins, 1988 in Turmudi, 2008)
This is justified by a report of P4TK (the Center
for the Development and Empowerment of
Mathematics Teachers and Education Personnel)
seminar and workshop in early 2007 that classroom
mathematics teaching does not improve high order
thinking skills, one of which is the ability to
understand mathematical concepts that do not directly
relate to everyday real life. As’ari of the Indonesian
Mathematics Society reported that today’s
mathematics teaching is characterized by short-term
objectives (passing the school, regional, or national
examination), complex materials, focus on
procedural ability, one-way communication,
monotonous classroom management, low order
thinking skill, textbook dependency, routine low-
level thinking question drills (Shadiq, 2007).
2 STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING
Students’ understanding about a concept may be
influenced by their prior knowledge. Students who
have better understanding will be able to explain the
various concepts in various ways. Thus, prior
knowledge enables every student to understand a
concept in a different way. In order for the students to
construct and understand fraction concepts correctly,
interactive multimedia are required to stimulate their
understanding.
The degree of understanding is determined by the
degree of relevance of an idea to a procedure. In other
words, a mathematical fact can be understood
comprehensively if it forms interrelated concepts.
According Duffin and Simpson (2000), a conceptual
understanding can be perceived as a student's ability
to explain a particular concept, use the concept in
different situations, develop its consequences.
Department of National Education (2003) explains
that a conceptual understanding is one of skills
expected to be achieved by the students in learning
mathematics; for example, by showing understanding
of mathematical concepts, explaining the
interconnection between concepts, and applying
concepts widely, accurately, efficiently and
appropriately in problem solving.
According to Skemp and Pollastek (in Sumarmo,
1987), there are two types of conceptual
understanding: instrumental understanding and
rational understanding. Instrumental understanding
can be perceived as an understanding of mutually
exclusive concepts, and mathematical formulas are
memorized only in simple calculations. While the
rational understanding contains a scheme or structure
that can be used to solve a wider problem.
A misunderstanding can be defined as a
contradiction between a concept in someone’s
understanding with the actual concept. A
misunderstanding of a material cannot be ignored in
the teaching and learning process because it may lead
Method/
Approach
Mathematical
Themes
Student
Themes
Abstract, strictly
of knowledge,
immutable truth
Real world, applicable,
students strategy as
starting point
Textbook oriented,
teacher centered,
chalk and talk
Student centered,
active participants,
problem solving
Sorting an ordering
(ranking) student
Student needs
(interest, abilities,
stages of growth)
ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences
442

to another misunderstanding of the subsequent
materials, and it may also become fossilized in a
student’s mind.
Studies conducted in various countries asserts the
importance of developing decimal teaching that
imparts an understanding of the essence of decimal
and fractional numbers (Brousseau, 1997; Hiebert,
1992; Irwin, 2001; Stacey, Helme, Archer and
Condon, 2001 in Stacey, and Steinle, 2008). In line
with this, Graeber and Johnson (in Wijaya, Stacey, &
Steinle, 2008) put that without any understanding of
decimal and fractional numbers, students may be able
to work on decimal or fractional operations but
cannot tell if the result of the operation is correct or
not.
Studies revealed that teachers have potential
misconceptions about decimals and fractions. Fixing
these misconceptions and imparting an understanding
of the basic concepts of decimal and fractional
numbers become necessary to prevent them from
being transmitted to their students (Menon, 2004;
Putt, 1995; Stacey, Helme, Steinle et al, 2001;
Thipkong and Davis, 1991; Tsao, 2005 in Wijaya,
Stacey and Steinle; 2008).
The misconception of elementary school students
in the lower grades in comparing decimal and
fractional numbers is largely because of the
generalization of the property of integers; i.e., the
more the decimal numbers or the greater the
numerator, the greater the integers. This property
applies only to the set of integers but is not
appropriately applied to the set of decimal or
fractional numbers (Steinle, 2004 in Wijaya Stacey &
Steinle, 2008).
In the perspective of developmental psychology,
children at early childhood school level show their
high natural tendency to play, especially when fed up
with school activities. Most teachers and parents are
not aware of this. What is worrying is that children
are exploring and channelling their curiosity and
passion through a variety of non-educational
computer-based entertainment facilities. Parental
response by providing entertainment devices at home
is not equipped with the awareness that a new source
of inspiration will have a major impact on children's
emotional and intellectual development.
3 MULTIMEDIA
Sadiman (2008:6) state that the word media
literally means instruments. According to Gagne (in
Arsyad, 2009), media are the various types of
components in the student environment that can
stimulate them to learn. Thus, multimedia is the use
of various media (text, audiovisual, and so on).
Meanwhile, Munir (2008) states that multimedia refer
to a computer system consisting of hardware and
software which makes it easy to combine such
various components as pictures, videos, graphics,
animations, voices, texts, and data controlled by a
computer program. Furthermore, Thompson (in
Munir 2008:190) defines multimedia as a system that
combines images, videos, animations, and sounds
interactively. Some multimedia elements, according
to Karyadinata (2006), include: texts, pictures,
graphics, sounds, videos, and animations.
While learning is an active process of scientific
inquiry or the process of science formulation, not just
the process of knowledge disclosure (Munir, 2008).
Furthermore, Sadiman (in Warsita, 2008) explains
that teaching is a planned effort to manipulate
learning resources in order to engage the learners in
the learning process. In the teaching process, there is
an interaction between learners and educators and
resources available in the learning environment.
Teaching is a process provided by a teacher to help
the learners gain knowledge and build their
characters. Put it another way, teaching is a process
to help students learn well.
4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION
To determine the feasibility of the developed
interactive multimedia, a validity test, namely expert
judgement, was carried out. Aspects considered in
this expert validation included content quality,
learning goal alignment, feedback and adaptation,
motivation, presentation design, interaction usability,
accessibility, reusability, and standard compliance
(Leacock and Nesbit, 2007), based on learning object
review instrument (LORI).
Developing Teaching Multimedia to Improve Elementary Students’ Understanding of Fraction Concepts
443

Table 1: Feasibility of Interactive Multimedia Validation
Aspects and
Indicators
Number
of Items
Criteria
on Score
Gained
Score
%
Content
Quality
4
12
54
90%
Learning
Goal
Alignment
4
12
50
83.3%
Feedback and
Adaptation
1
3
11
73.3%
Motivation
1
3
13
86.7%
Presentation
Design
1
3
13
86.7%
Interaction
Usability
3
9
37
82.2%
Accessibility
2
6
26
86.6%
Reusability
1
3
14
93.3%
Standard
Compliance
1
3
12
80%
The result shows that the gained feasibility
percentage was 84.68% or could be categorized as
very good.
This study used paired t-test and Analysis Tools
menu on the Microsoft Excel 2010. The result showed
that significance (α) 0.05 (see Table 2). Moreover,
students’ average scores pre-treatment is lower than
post-treatment. The calculation by using normalized
gain shows that the highest average comes from the
students in the high group, which is 0.71 (the high
category) (Hake, 1999). Meanwhile, the middle group
and below group are in the score of 0.64 and 0.56
which belong to the middle categories.
Table 2: The comparison between before and after
treatment
t-Test: Paired Two Sample for
Means
Variable 1
Variable 2
Mean
22.5666667
33.6333333
Variance
87.871038
49.208451
Observations
30
30
df
29
t Stat
7.873408
P(T<=t) one-
tail
1.03289E-
13
t Critical one-
tail
1.32908344
P(T<=t) two-
tail
2.0041E-13
t Critical two-
tail
1.893207
According to the Table II, it could be stated that
the appliction of multimedia learning can help student
in understanding the concept of fractions, and help
teachers in doing variations in learning. It give
positive feedback towards the students’ improvement
to the learning material.
The developed interactive multimedia have
helped students to think reflectively in such a way that
they could actively participate and try to connect
ideas displayed in the multimedia. As Lest and Behr
(in Walle, 2007) put it, in order to connect ideas, it
takes five representations involved in the teaching
process; they are images, written symbols, spoken
language, real world situations, and manipulative
models. These five elements are all in the developed
interactive multimedia. Through this interactive
multimedia, students could understand why
1
2
+
1
3
=
1
6
and what
1
2
𝑥
1
3
=
1
6
means.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This study shows that the application of multimedia
learning on fractional material gives a positive impact
in mathematics learning. Therefore, by applying
multimedia learning, teachers can help student in
understanding the still abstract mathematical
concepts for the student. It will also enhance students
independence through mastery and mathematics
learning process.
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