DESIGNING AN EXPERT SYSTEM BASED E-COURSE IN PHYSICS AND ASSESSING ITS EFFECTIVENESS ON DEVELOPING BAHRAINI SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' COGNITIVE ACHIEVEMENT AND SCIENTIFIC THINKING SKILLS

Using expert systems and artificial intelligence in designing e-Learning and its related technologies is formulating a sound trend in research and development in the field of educational technology. However, adopting such new innovations depends on developmental research findings that are to be carried on different learning tasks, academic fields, learner variables, and contexts. The current research aims at designing an Expert Systems Based e-Course in Secondary School Physics and discovering its effectiveness in developing Bahraini students' cognitive achievement and scientific thinking skills as compared to designing the same e-Course without expert systems. The contention of this research is that designing e-Learning based on using expert systems can enhance scientific thinking skills as well as achievement. Due to the developmental nature of this research, the researchers employed the Developmental Research Method as defined by Elgazzar (2014) with two experimental groups' pre/post test Quasi-experimental design, six research hypotheses were formulated. So, the content of Physics (102) course was analyzed and a list of design standards was derived and both lists were refereed. The first researcher developed two designs of e-Courses of two units from the Physics (102) course: one was based on Expert Systems and the second without expert systems using Khamis (2007) ISD model and both designs were refereed to meet the derived list of design standards. A cognitive achievement test and scientific thinking skills test were developed and proven to be valid and reliable. The research sample was made up of (50) students from two classes drawn from two male secondary schools, Kingdom of Bahrain, (25) students in each class (cluster). These two classes were assigned randomly to the two experimental groups in the design: the first group was taught by using expert system based eCourse design, and the second group was taught by using the e-Course without expert system based design. The research experiment was carried on the 2014/2015 academic year and the two research tools were administered pre/post the experimentation. Appropriate statistical procedures were applied in testing the six research hypotheses. Results of testing those hypotheses revealed superiority of the expert systems based e-Course design of Physics as compared to the same e-Course without expert systems design in both achievement and scientific thinking skills in post-tests and McGugian modified gain ratios. The paper also contains a list of relevant recommendations, a list of future fellow up researches, Figures, Tables, and References.