AN INTERACTIVE SCENARIO-BASED EDUCATIONAL TOOL TO EDUCATE MALAYSIAN TEENAGERS ABOUT ONLINE PERSONAL PRIVACY

Whilst Malaysians are enjoying the benefits from online services everywhere across the country, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is aware of the increasing need to safeguard them, especially children and adolescents who are the most vulnerable, from threats and risks related to the Internet. Using social media could expose adolescents to risks which can have adverse effect on their emotional and physical well-being. It was reported that nearly 90% of CyberSAFE 2013 survey respondents viewed that learning about Internet safety was important. However, only 26% reported that they definitely know how to keep themselves safe online, and nearly 17% expressed concerns about invasion of privacy. As such there is a need to ensure these young children are taught to be safe, secure and responsible online users so that their experiences online are positive ones.

In view of Malaysia current education syllabus in schools which is lacking in emphasizing about issues regarding online personal privacy, there would be a need to develop an interactive scenario-based educational tool (ISBET) to educate the young users of the Internet in Malaysia about the concept of personal privacy and how the Internet may impose risks to personal privacy. This study aims to identify suitable content and delivery strategy for ISBET with the objective of allowing the students to effectively learn about online personal privacy in cyberspace. The scenarios are ought to be derived from real-world events to provide the students with adequate exposure.

ISBET uses a series of digital authentic problematic scenarios to initiate lessons and the solutions to the problems serves as the main vehicle for learning. In ISBET, learning is bounded by problematic scenarios and students are expected to encounter the scenarios even before the learning begins. As such, this learning strategy is suitable for educating adolescents about the concept of online personal privacy since adolescents in Malaysia have been consistently disclosing personal information on social media prior to the introduction of Personal Data Protection Act 2010. An authentic problems regarding online personal privacy on the Internet should create a need to solve the problems which encourage the learning process among students. While working toward a solution to the problem; students are expected to construct the essential conceptual knowledge of the subject matter, develop problem-solving and self-directed learning skills. To devise an effective ISBET, this study includes deliberate considerations of four key elements which are the scenario construction, facilitation, engagement and assessment.

The paper will begin by proposing the framework used to design and develop ISBET for educating about online personal privacy for young learners. Following the explanation of the framework, the paper shall discuss the method used to identify contents for ISBET that are significant for Malaysian adolescents. The paper will conclude with the potential impacts of ISBET to Malaysian adolescents.