Synchronous Display and Whiteboard-Like Freehand Writing App as Teaching Tool for Virtual Classroom amidst the Pandemic [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Purpose: The research evaluates if teachers can achieve better teaching outcomes by using a proposed mobile interactive system (MIS) developed for this study as an additional approach to enhancing teachers’ proficiency in Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) in the virtual classroom. Background: According to previous studies, teachers’ selfassessment on TPACK might be affected by their egos because they have autonomy over the students in the classroom. Some studies suggest that utilisation of an interactive whiteboard (IWB) promotes creativity in teaching and learning but that it is unsuitable for a virtual environment due to its large size and the high maintenance costs associated with owning one in a teacher’s residence. Besides, some studies also reveal that allowing the students to assess their teachers through TPACK  is able to reduce potential errors which might result from the TPACK self-assessment done by teachers. Methods: Preand postexperiments were conducted with the developed MIS integrated into teaching process. Synchronous display (SD) and whiteboard-like freehand writing (WFW) were features of the MIS integrated into the experimental group. Questionnaires were distributed to the students, and a reflective measurement model was formed using SmartPLS and IBM SPSS Statistics. Findings: Based on our findings, teachers’ Technological Content Knowledge had a significant positive effect on TPACK with the inclusion of MIS in online teaching. Predictive relevance was also evaluated through a Q2 value to predict the endogenous construct of the constructed model. The Q2 value was greater than zero, indicating that the model possesses a predictive relevance. Conclusion: The integration of the developed MIS in the virtual classroom has a significant positive impact on the students’ academic performance relating to concept learning and knowledge acquisition of subject matter. Open Peer Review Reviewer Status AWAITING PEER REVIEW Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. Page 1 of 12 F1000Research 2021, 10:1308 Last updated: 22 DEC 2021


Introduction Background
The outbreak of COVID-19 in the year 2020 caused a significant impact on the education sector. Pedagogy has changed drastically to cope with the pandemic and has many cases shifted from conventional in-classroom learning to online teaching. 1 The classical in-classroom teaching and learning is commonly practiced to promote social interactions among teachers and students. 2 However, it is now unable to fit well into the current education environment due to the pandemic. 3 Because of this, the rapid evolution of technology will alter pedagogy where emerging technologies are accessible in education. 4 In the virtual classroom, teachers solely depend on the mouse and keyboard to conceptualize subject matter where the use of conventional tools is prohibited. Hence, emerging technologies are excellent for content presentations in the virtual classroom. 5 From students' perspective, attending lessons via synchronous learning video conferencing is preferred as it offers flexibility, and students are engaged in the virtual session as much as in the physical classroom. 6 However, the effectiveness of the integration of technology in conducting online classes is questionable. The adoption of the TPACK model aims to help teachers contemplate their knowledge domains (technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge) and the intersections of these, so that they can teach and engage students effectively. According to Hossain, Ying and Saha, TPACK positively influences higher education by making the lessons more interesting through the observation of learners' needs. 7 From their studies, students have positive attitudes towards the TPACK model, in which their feedback can be addressed and used to construct lessons tailored to their needs. Moreover, teachers' TPACK self-efficacy is enhanced in terms of lesson planning with technology. 8

Problem statement
Since the students are prohibited from entering their physical classes, teachers are facing challenges and difficulties when conducting online classes via the virtual classroom. 9 Additionally, teachers are requested to prepare teaching materials and determine ways to present them in the virtual classroom. Thus, research questions are drawn as follows: • Research Question 1: Does the integration of MIS into the virtual classroom enhance teachers' self-efficacy from students' perspectives in TPACK?
• Research Question 2: Does the integration of MIS into the virtual classroom enhance teachers' efficacy in presenting and conceptualising teaching materials?

Objectives
Since the introduction of the virtual classroom, it has become evident that it is essential to have a simple-to-use, tailored tool for assisting teachers in conducting online classes according to the current educational trend. Consequently, a mobile interactive system is proposed and developed to cope with the current trend. Furthermore, the introduction of the MIS offers teachers the ability to utilise the features of synchronous display (SD) and whiteboard-like freehand writing (WFW) features. Thus, the objectives are as follows: 1. Determine if the introduction of MIS features assists in enhancing teachers' proficiency in TPACK from students' perspectives.
2. Determine teachers' efficacy in presenting and conceptualising teaching materials by constructing a model based on the integration of MIS with the adoption of the TPACK framework in the virtual classroom.

Literature review Virtual classroom
In following the standard of procedures set by the government to reduce close contact, the transformation of the current education system is necessary. Thus, conducting classes through online platforms has become a new trend in education. 10 In the virtual classroom, classes are taught online synchronously via video conference. However, acquiring new skills and knowledge relating to communication, pedagogy, content, and structure is required due to distinctive differences in the teaching environment. 11

Interactive whiteboards
The combination of IWB with a virtual learning environment (VLE) does exist with limited studies on it. According to Heemskerk, Kuipert, and Meijer's study, implementing IWB with VLE can boost students' motivation towards the subject matter. 12 However, the test given by teachers proves that it is ineffective to students' learning outcomes even with the implementation of IWB and VLE. Furthermore, the IWB is an expensive and fragile device as it can be damaged easily, resulting in inconvenience when teaching with it, which does not justify long-term usage. 13 Besides, teachers still retain complete autonomy in the classroom, creating a teacher-centered environment while teaching with IWB. 14 In short, IWB is not practical to be integrated into the virtual classroom because the IWB is difficult to maintain and not friendly for teachers who conduct classes at their residence during the pandemic.

TPACK framework
As a teacher, one must be aware of and adapt to any changes, honing skills and knowledge to guide and expose students to state-of-art technologies in the virtual classroom. 15 However, insufficient teaching experience via virtual classrooms forces teachers to polish their skills and knowledge. Hence, they can cope with the current education phenomenon. As a result, the pedagogy and teaching materials presentation are elevated. 16 Therefore, the TPACK framework is adopted. It consists of seven elements, the three main elements being technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), content knowledge (CK), which are derived into four sub-elements pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), technological content knowledge (TCK), and TPACK. 17 Initially, the TPACK framework is teachers' self-assessment about the thoroughness of their understanding of every element, including the teachers' "know-how" in utilising the technology and integrating it into their pedagogy and teaching materials presentation. 18 However, assessing it from the teacher's or student's perspective brings different meanings. For example, the teachers' perspective is viewed from the educator's perspective, whereas the students' perspective is viewed from the virtual classroom experience created by their teachers. 19 In short, the TPACK framework is vital because it helps assess the readiness of teachers' knowledge and understanding in using technology integrated into their pedagogy and content presentation, both from the teachers' and students' perspectives.

Rickles et al. (2017) mapped their research elements (Learning Environment Context and Learning Activity Context)
with the adoption of the TPACK framework. 20 The Learning Activity influenced TK, PK, and CK, while the Learning Environment Context may affect all elements, including Learning Activity Context. Hence, the study proposes that the Learning Environment Context supports the relevancy of Learning Activity Context as complimentary learning. These two contexts are the keys of context-based learning (CBL), where the social aspect of learning and learning activity with solid context understanding in acquisition and processing knowledge are concerned. Moreover, CBL allows teachers to prepare early for teaching materials, making it easier to implement than problem-based learning, which is relatively timeconsuming. Hence, the rapid change of teaching approach necessitated during the pandemic makes CBL more suitable for current phenomena in terms of content-oriented presentation. The overall flow in determining teachers' self-efficacy in presenting and conceptualising teaching materials using MIS is illustrated in Figure 1.

Participants
Cluster sampling was implemented. Students who experienced online learning with the integration of the MIS features were chosen as the cluster because of its capability to reduce sample bias. This data collection method provides a better representation of populations. 21 Online questionnaires were distributed to 45 Malaysian private university students enrolling in the subject "Knowledge Management". The chosen group was taught with MIS integrated into their online classes.

Procedure
The experiment was conducted from the start till the end of the semester (3 months). This study is a quasi-experimental one-group with the pre-and-post-tests. The MIS is tailored for online classes with the introduction of two major features: SD and WFW. The questionnaires were created to adopt the TPACK framework and prepared in two different sets specifically for pre-test and post-test through Google Form. Besides, conducting TPACK self-assessment from teachers' perspectives may lead to biases. The assessment can be inaccurate as assessing themselves is not convincing enough to reflect if their understanding is up to par. 22 Thus, to reduce the bias from the teacher's self-assessment, the student's perspective on the TPACK should be taken into consideration instead. 23 The collected data is trimmed and analysed using SmartPLS software v3.3.2. R is an open-source alternative (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905).

Results
In this study, the adoption of the TPACK framework is proposed. The teacher's efficacy mapped in conjunction with the integration of MIS in the virtual classroom is illustrated in Figure 2.
Through PLS-SEM, the proposed model is constructed in Figure 3 based on adopting the TPACK framework. Moreover, the proposed model is constructed as a reflective Measurement Model.   Firstly, after running Partial Least Squared Algorithm, the constructs' outer loadings indicators are observed in Table 1.
The loadings for the construct indicators are > 0.7.
Secondly, the construct reliability and validity are examined, as shown in Thirdly, the discriminant validity of the model is inspected. The Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) is preferred because of its stringent measures with sensitivity rates of 97%-99%. 26 On the other hand, the Fornell-Larcker Criterion is insensitive with a rate of 20.82%. 26 Furthermore, the HTMT values of this study are above 0.85 and less than 0.90 (Table 3). Therefore, it satisfied the HTMT threshold. Hence, the discriminant validity between relative constructs is established. Next, the significance and relevance of the structural model in this study are assessed, as shown in Table 4. First, a One-Tailed test Bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap (BCA) with bias and skewness adjusted are conducted. As research hypotheses are directional, the bootstrapping is with 5000 subsamples. Then, the path coefficients are obtained and further examined. The path coefficients values are closer to +1, representing strong positive relationships between latent constructs. Additionally, the path coefficient values should be at the level of at least 0.05 significant level.
Next, the R 2 and R 2 adjusted values are shown in Table 5 are considered substantial. 24 The effect size is calculated using the formula below: The results in Table 6 indicate that the TPK (0.109) has a negligible effect in producing the R 2 for TPACK. However, the TCK (1.008) illustrates that it has a significant impact on producing the R 2 for TPACK.  The results for the blindfolding are in the rightmost column, which is shown in Table 7. The predictive relevance Q 2 of TCK has a value of 0.598, TPK has a value of 0.579, and TPACK has a value of 0.675. These values indicate that the model has predictive relevance based on the three endogenous constructs in which the values of Q 2 are considerably above zero.
A paired-samples T-test was performed, as shown in Table 8, to identify the students' improvement on their understanding of the subject matter with the integration of developed MIS. The mean score difference of À3.289 shows students' understanding of the subject matter is improved. The p-value of 0.00000003178 denotes that integrating the developed MIS in the virtual classroom positively affects the students' academic performance. The improvement over the pre-and post-knowledge checking tests are substantially significant.

Discussion
The involvement of technology in education acts as a catalyst in transforming the conventional classroom into the virtual classroom. The extensive involvement of technology in the current education trend prompted the adoption of the TPACK framework in this study. Moreover, the developed MIS is integrated into online teaching as a complementary pedagogy that assists the teachers in presenting teaching materials. Furthermore, the proposed model is constructed based on adopted TPACK framework elements. The consideration of students' perspective TPACK is mainly a result of the potential bias and misconceptions raised by the teachers' self-assessment on TPACK proficiency. These issues can be addressed and mitigated by gaining feedback and insights from the students' perspective instead. From the result of the path coefficient, we can see that a teacher with great understanding in transforming the content delivering it to the students using developed MIS possess the ability to enhance classroom activities which reflects their proficiency in TPACK. From the result of the paired-samples T-test, the mean difference for the pre-score and post-score indicates that the students are improved academically from concept and knowledge acquisitions. The outcome also illustrates that the teachers' proficiency in TPACK is closely related to the effectiveness of the integration of developed MIS in the virtual classroom.
Additionally, the developed MIS with SD and WFW is tailored to assist teachers in conducting online classes. Familiarised teaching experience is replicated especially teaching materials presentation. Students' feedback plays a vital role in determining the proficiency and self-efficacy of the teachers. Therefore, it is essential to address more insights into integrating technology into the virtual classroom than teachers' self-assessment. In this study, teachers' integration of MIS into the virtual classroom affects the TCK and TPACK. It indicates that the thoroughness of teachers' understanding of the technology in presenting their teaching materials determines their students' learning experience in the virtual classroom.