A mobile application for improving student reading fluency, comprehension, engagement and satisfaction using Universal Design for Learning and digital storytelling

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of a novel mobile education application that uses Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and digital storytelling on the reading fluency, comprehension, engagement and satisfaction of children learning to read Arabic. For the purpose of this research, an interactive mobile learning application was developed based on the idea of targeting learners’ individual needs, where students progress from reading single words to sentences and creating their own stories and sharing them on a bespoke website. The participants for this study were second-year primary school children, their parents and their Arabic language teachers from different primary schools in Saudi Arabia. Due to the closure of the schools in Saudi Arabia as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, this study was conducted online. This study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches to measure the effectiveness of the interactive tool and to obtain knowledge about the pupils' technological backgrounds. The qualitative approach involved online semi-structured interviews for the teachers and online observations of children interacting with the application. The quantitative approach is based on online questionnaires for both the children and their parents to obtain opinions about the system, while the parent survey also examined the children’s prior knowledge of using technology and the home literacy environment. Additionally, the quantitative phase involved pre- and post-tests to assess reading fluency and comprehension of the experimental and control groups before and after the experimental group engaged with the application. The qualitative results showed that the application elicited a high level of engagement and satisfaction; and the quantitative results strongly indicated that children who used the system had increased reading fluency and comprehension compared to the control group. The results of this research strongly indicate that a mobile system based on UDL and digital storytelling can have a significant positive effect on fluency, comprehension, engagement and satisfaction when learning to read Arabic.