DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF

COMPUTER-BASED LOCALIZED
READING MODULES IN IMPROVING
GRADE 10 STUDENTS READING
COMPREHENSION SKILLS:
AN AUTONOMOUS LEARNING
EXPERIENCE
Presented by:
RONALD F. CAGAMPAN

INTRODUCTION
An exigent but sad reality nowadays is
that students love for reading slowly
diminishes because of increasing and
remarkable factors which includes
students lure to technology. Numerous
studies reveal that computer entices
students to draw apart from reading. If
teachers wont find a way to make
teaching more interesting, this surely
brings deterioration to students
comprehension skills.

Objectives:
This study attempts to develop and validate computer-based reading
modules (e-books) with localized texts in improving the reading
comprehension skills of the Grade 10 students of public high schools in
Taguig City. The reading modules use localized texts which are told and
shared on facebook that make the students react and share their views
and opinions on certain issues.

SIGNIFICANCE
The localization of the curriculum can allow learning to become
more meaningful and relevant. It supports policy formulation and
standard setting for reform of the curriculum and the impact of this
on teacher skills and knowledge. Localization will involve the use of
local materials both as the subject and object of instruction.
Localization will also involve making the local culture an integral
part of the curriculum.

BACKGROUND
OF THE STUDY

The deteriorating performance of Filipino students

in the national and international tests is often
attributed to poor reading comprehension. This is
the main reason why the DepEd strengthens its
drive to improve this skill among students by
launching E-CARP (Every child a reader program)
whose ultimate goal is for the school, the pupils
and their parents to collaborate to make each
child a reader. This is the policy that emphasizes
that every child a reader by Grade 3.
Nonetheless, we should never forget that learning
to read is just the tip of the iceberg but what really
matters is learning to comprehend.

With this, teachers must never stop looking, finding, and creating
numerous and modern strategies to teach students about reading
comprehension. It is really an unending quest for development not only for
students performance in English but in all disciplines. With this, educators
must help students increase their level of comprehension (Herrera, Perez &
Escamilla, 2010). If teachers understand what strategies effective readers
should be used while reading, these could provide new directions for literacy
programs. (Irvin, 2004).

One of the problems that is evident to students nowadays is

the proliferation of computer shops near schools. In fact, a
study done by Russel (2005) revealed that computers have
good and bad effects on students performance in school.
Another article seemed to compliment this study when
Lawrence (2012) cited that technology affects students
ability to properly learn and retain important material since
they rely so much on computers. One observation of the
proponent was that some students would sometimes prefer
to play computer games rather than attending classes.
Unquestionable is the fact that computers or modern
technology really excites the students and they spend more
time dealing with computers than books or than their studies
but reality shouts that students spend more time in
computers not to study nor to research but to play games, to
chat in different social networking and more.

The proponent, way back some years ago, had tried his luck applying for a teaching position in Singapore in which
teacher-applicants were obliged to create worksheets, all in soft copies. The school where he was applying during
that time never used hard-bound books anymore. He then experienced working with all possible computer
applications in doing worksheets for students. This was the first time she came across e-books. He was then asked
to prepare her worksheet in PowerPoint presentation then with the use the coordinators laptop it was transformed
into eBook. That was the start of the proponents wish to create eBooks to be used in teaching his own students.

It is within this context that this study is perceived, to design and develop modern
alternative strategies in teaching students on how to improve their comprehension skills
without any force to be used by the teacher but the students themselves would be very much
interested because the materials are appealing to them, and what could appear really
appealing to our students nowadays except computer-based learning modules. Thus, this
paper investigated the main issues involved in designing, implementing and validating an
electronic courseware or computer-based learning modules for Grade 10 students who are
enrolled during the school year 2016-2017. The proponent likewise advocates that apart from
the usual and traditional teaching methodology of the teachers, there is a need for excellent
electronic courseware which will not only meet the students demands for the arousal of their
interest, but could also be used for the delivery of a particular module with or without the
presence of a competent teacher. Moreover, this could also embark on learners autonomy
towards reading comprehension.

RESEARCH
QUESTIONS

Specifically the study seek to answer the: 1) profile of the

student-respondents in terms of results of the pretest using McCallCrabbs Standard Tests in Reading and the schools MPS in the
National Achievement Test in English 2016; 2) preferred teaching
methodologies and approaches of the Grade 10 English teachers in
terms of utilized instructional materials in teaching reading
comprehension; 3) learning difficulties of the student-respondents in
reading comprehension based on the Least Mastered Skills (LMS)
during the first periodic test; 4) result of evaluation by students,
teachers, content-expert and IT-experts on the computer-based
learning modules in terms of the following criteria: 4.1) Educational
Usefulness and 4.2) User Interface Usability; 5) extent of the
validation of IT experts in terms of the given criteria; 6) learning
outcomes derived from the computer-based learning modules
based on the following competencies on:6.1

Decoding meaning

through context clues, 6.2 Noting details, 6.3 Deducing theme,

mood and lesson, 6.4 Inferring meaning, 6.5 Identifying figurative
language, 7) Using the experimental and control set-up, the a
significant difference in the learning outcomes between the two

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

An outstanding paper award recipient ascilite Melbourne 2008 conference authored by
Lam et.al.(2008) highlighted the usability and educational usefulness of e-books. The study
lasted for two and a half years having two main phases: phase 1 in the academic year
2006-2007 and phase 2 from the summer of 2007-2008.

The first phase focused on

students impressions of reading eBooks on a PPC and sessions were followed by home
reading for a week or two. The study disclosed the findings that eBooks are not yet a useful
and practical tool for academic learning. Enjoyment of the eBook reading process was not
high. Comprehension of digital text was also found to be challenging. It also noted clearly
that user support is vital. This finding could be attributed to the fact that subjects of the study
were made to download and install the eBooks themselves thats why the research showed
that during that time eBooks are not yet a useful and practical tool because it brought
distress to students with less comfortable with technology.

Education has always been about receiving and

processing timely information. Wireless technologies
have provided a new channel for information sharing and
a method to communicate real-time data
wherever/whenever. E-reader devices are one of the
many resources available to the education community to
better the students experience with digesting information
and the teachers ability to provide up-to-date content.
With the advent of WIFI-enabled e-readers, this content is
easily delivered by Internet.

-Hamilton, 2009

Korat (2008) showed that children exposed to electronic books showed

improvement in word meaning, recognition and phonological awareness.
Children were assigned to use an electronic book in different activity modes
such as read story only and read with dictionary in order to measure
whether or not children had improved on their literacy skills having used the
electronic book and results were children did show improvement in
understanding the meanings of words after they had worked through eBook
and best results were manifested from the group who used eBook in the
read story with dictionary.

RESEARCH
METHODOLOG
Y

The learning modules will be reproduced by the end of academic year 20162017.
The study will utilize descriptive-exploratory and quasi- experimental method of
research. Descriptive method will be used in the study because it employed an
investigation and observation on the effectiveness of computer-based learning
modules in improving students reading comprehension skills while it is exploratory
because a result led to another finding which deemed significant to the whole
study. It is quasi-experimental because it will use non- random sampling.

THANK YOU!