Evaluation of Students Concentration in Classroom with ... · Key Words :Electroencephalogram; Quran recitation; Classroom background 1 Introduction Over the years, educational researchers

Evaluation of Students Concentration inClassroom with Quranic Recitation

Background using Electroencephalogram

Z.Azavitra∗a, Safie S.Ia, M.I.Yusofa,Mohd Aimullaha, N.H.Jafar a,H.Nur Faziraa, S.Siti Hafshar a

Instrumentation and Control Engineering Section,Universiti Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysian Institute of IndustrialTechnology (UniKL MITEC),

81750 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

*Corresponding author Email: *[email protected]

March 26, 2018

Abstract

The classroom environment can affect the students con-centration during learning session. The Quranic recitationis believed to be able to increase the brain activity relatedto the concentration level. In this study, the frequencyspectrum of Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from 16points of the electrode placement on the head was analyzedto find the effect of Quranic recitation background duringlectures. The comparison based on complexity of lecturecontent was conducted. It was found that Quranic recita-tion background during lectures can increase concentrationprocess of students during lecture with higher level of com-plexity. This paper is expected to facilitate improvementsin the classroom environment which could lead to betterstudents achievement.

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International Journal of Pure and Applied MathematicsVolume 118 No. 24 2018ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)url: http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/Special Issue http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/

Key Words:Electroencephalogram; Quran recitation;Classroom background

1 Introduction

Over the years, educational researchers have investigated many fac-tors considered to affect student learning in classroom. One of themain factors which were widely discussed is the classroom envi-ronment itself (Qureshi, Janjua, Zaman, Lodhi, & Tariq, 2014).Current studies of classroom environment are historically precededby research that examined classroom characteristics such as or-der, organization, rule clarity, teacher control, affiliation and sup-port (Moos, 1979). Student achievements also connected to stu-dent mindfulness and concentration inside classroom (Lewis, 2001).Some authors connect levels of mindfulness and concentration withprograms, beliefs and feelings they collected during the learningprocess. These feelings and beliefs are stored in subconscious mindand come to consciousness in the form of positive or negative thoughts(Leung & Lam, 2003).

Medical music therapy which has been developed rapidly in thelast 20 years has been used effectively to alter emotions, positiveor negative thoughts (Gooding, 2010). Music activities have beenproven to act as reinforce and could be beneficial to overall aca-demic and social behaviors improvement (Shekah, Hassan, & Oth-man, 2013). The music helps a person to be in relaxing conditionsstates which later can generate a focus state of mind (Nakamuraet al., 1999). One of the most beautiful, attractive and the mostnatural types of music is the spiritual music of Quranic recitation.Quranic recitation increases the brain wave activity more than lis-tening to the classical music which result in a more relaxing andalert condition. Abdullah & Omar (2011) has studied the compar-ison of the alpha wave generation while listening to Quranic recita-tion and hard music. The results shown that the alpha wave mag-nitude during listening to Quranic recitation is higher compared torest condition and listening to hard music. Odeh, Hodali, Sleibi, &Salsa (2009) extended this work to prove that the alpha wave mag-nitude during listening to Quranic recitation was higher comparedto resting condition and listening to hard rock music. It was ob-

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International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

served that the beta wave is activated during activity that includesthinking and concentrating. Harmony et al., (1996) reported thatthe delta wave is increased when concentration is high. Anotherstudies by Bakri, Zakaria, Muhamad Zainuldin, & Abusafia (2014)suggested that the Alpha and Beta waves could be related withthe state of relaxation and attention. Zulkurnaini, Kadir, Murat,& Isa, (2012) investigated on the best music therapy for studentsin helping them to focus in doing homework and activities relatedwith their studies and found that Alpha waves and Beta waves wereincreased while listening to Rock, Mozart music, Quranic recitationand decreased when listening to Light and Jazz music. In summary,many results indicating the potential of Quranic recitation as a mu-sic therapy have been reported. However, most of the studies in theopen literature did not simultaneously examine the effect of Quranicrecitation to the students during learning session in classroom.

Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of Quranicrecitation as a classroom background to increase their focus andconcentration during their learning session. Electroencephalogram(EEG) was used to monitor and analyze the effectiveness of this ideaspecifically to identify brain wave changes of the subjects (Sinno &Tout, 2008). The findings of this study is expected to improve theclassroom environment during the learning session which could leadto students achievement.

2 Methodology

2.1 Experimental Setup

In this study, 15 subjects from Instrumentation and Control Engi-neering section with aged 20-25 years involved in the data collectionsession. All subjects are in healthy condition with normal hearingand did not have any brain disease. Subjects are advised to getenough rest and sleep at least 6 hours before the experiment wasconducted. They are also not allowed to take any medication andcaffeine, and have been told earlier not to apply any hair gel dur-ing data collection session. The electrodes are placed at the scalpwith the 10-20 system electrode placements. The experiment wasconducted at room temperature (25C) with air conditioning. Theroom environment was under soundproof.

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The experiment interface for data collection was developed us-ing MATLAB Graphical User Interface (GUI). Surah Al-Fatihah,Surah Al-Asr and Surah Al-Alaq were used as Quranic recitationbackground during lecture session. The source of the audio is inMP3 player. The surah was kept on repeating until the learningsession is finished. The subjects have to experience two learningsessions; low level and high level of complexity lecture. The lecturesession video of engineering subjects with the duration of 8 minuteshas been recorded for both level of complexity. The learning sessionwas conducted in Malay language. It is purposely to be conductedin monotonous and not attractive manners, in order to reduce theconcentration level of the subjects. The subjects are instructed tosit at their own comfortable position and resting with eyes closedin one minute. Then, subjects have been instructed to rest witheyes opened for one minute. After that, subjects have to watch thelearning session video. During the session, if they lose their con-centration, they have to click specified button in the experimentinterface. The button click time is recorded using the MATLABGUI. For all of the sessions, the EEG signals have been recordedfor with and without Quranic recitation as classroom background.

2.2 Hardware and Software

This study was performed using 16 channels EEG machine for thedata collection. The EEG machine system can collects EEG (Bakriet al., 2014) signal with electrodes, via integrated amplification,A/D transformation, PC auto analysis, Fast Fourier Transform(FFT) to form EEG that displays with color depth. The electrodesare used to acquire the subjects data is connected between the sub-ject and the panel. The panel is connected with the computer tostore the collected data.

The data collection is conducted where the electrodes is placedon the subjects scalp. It consists of 16 electrodes set in placethrough point A, Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4, C3, C4, P3, P4, O1, O2, F7,F8, T3, T4, T5 and T6 as shown in Figure 1. The A pole (A1,A2) which located at the center of the forehead that act as a refer-ence pole. EEG32 Integrative Machine of Digital EEG Topographysoftware has been used for the data recording process. The dataanalysis was carried out using MATLAB.

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Figure 1. The electrode placement (16 channels)

3 Results and Discussion

Firstly, the investigation focused on differences of the frequencyspectrum between the EEG signals during learning session usingvideo with and without Quranic recitation background. In generalobservation for both situations, the average frequency spectrumexhibits less then 50Hz. Figure 2 to Figure 9 show the frequencyspectrum up to 50Hz for EEG recording from 16 points of the headillustrated in Figure 1. The data presented are based on the averageof data from 15 students that are required to watch a low level ofcomplexity lecture video while their EEG was being recorded.

Figure 2. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) C3A1 and (b)

C4A2

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Figure 3. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) F1A1 and (b)

F2A2

Figure 4. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) F3A1 and (b)

F4A2

Figure 5. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) F7A1 and (b)F8A2

Figure 6. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) O1A1 and (b)

O2A2

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Figure 7. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) P3A1 and (b)P4A2

Figure 8. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) T3A1 and (b)

T4A2

Figure 9. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) T5A1 and (b)

T6A2

We then compare the EEG spectrum between both scenarios usingEquation (1):

Difference =

FFT (withoutbackgroundEEG) − FFT (withbackgroundEEG)(1)

From this observation, there are differences of magnitude for therespective frequencies monitored in this study. The difference be-tween EEG energy spectrum without and with Quranic recitation

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background is given in Table 1. The sum of energy difference is1658. From Table 1, it is observed that the Quranic recitation didnot significantly help the participant to concentrate in understand-ing the given lecture.

Table1: Energy spectrum difference of EEG for simple lecture

Figure 10 to Figure 17 show the EEG spectrum with and withoutQuranic Recitation Background for complexed lecture.

Figure 10. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)C3A1 and

(b)C4A2

Figure 11. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)F1A1 and (b)

F2A2

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Figure 12. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a) F3A1 and

(b)F4A2

Figure 13. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)F7A1 and

(b)F8A2

Figure 14. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)O1A1 and

(b)O2A2

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Figure 15. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)P3A1 and

(b)P4A2

Figure 16. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a) T3A1 and

(b)T4A2

Figure 17. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a complicated lecture of location (a)T5A1 and

(b)T6A2

Based on the EEG spectrum, when a complicated lecture wasgiven, the brain activities were more active in order to focus inunderstanding the lecture. The difference values using Equation(1) is given in Table 2. The sum of energy difference is 725.

Table 2: Energy spectrum difference of EEG for complicatedlecture

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Figure 2. EEG Spectrum with and without Quranic RecitationBackground for a simple lecture of location (a) C3A1 and (b)

C4A2

As can be seen from Table 2, brain activities are more actives to con-centrate more during a lecture when Quran recitation backgroundis present during the learning process. This theory is proven whencomparing the magnitude spectrum between a basic and compli-cated lectures using Equation (2) and the results is tabulated inTable 3.

Difference = FFT (complicatedEEG) − FFT (basicEEG) (2)

As can be seen from Table 3, brain requires more activities in orderto understand complicated lectures. When no Quranic recitationbackground presents, the brain increased 13770 energy spectrums tofocus more on the lecture. Similar case when the Quranic recitationbackground is present during the lecture, the brain is more activewith an increase of energy spectrum with a total of 15754.

From this study, it can be concluded that, having Quranic recita-tion background during lectures increase the concentration processof students.

Table 3: Energy spectrum difference of EEG between basic andcomplicated lecture

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4 Conclusion

The present study was designed to determine the effect of theQuranic recitation background during lectures to the students con-centration. This study has shown that based on comparison of thefrequency spectrum between the EEG signals for concentration ac-tivity during watching a lecture video with and without Quranicrecitation background, it is observed that the Quranic recitationdid not significantly help the subject to concentrate in understand-ing the given lecture (simple lecture). However, the brain activitiesare more active when a complexed lecture is given in order to focusin understanding the lecture. This study will serve as a base forfuture studies, as it can conclude that, having Quranic recitationbackground during lectures can increase the concentration processof students.

Acknowledgement: The authors would like to be express ap-preciation to Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) for providing finan-cial assistance under SGPIM Grant project MARA/UNI:1/33/06/18/14(3).

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References

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Evaluation of Students Concentration in Classroom with ... · Key Words :Electroencephalogram; Quran recitation; Classroom background 1 Introduction Over the years, educational researchers