The design and evaluation of an interactive multimedia program for promoting deaf learners' reading skills

Deaf children have difficulties to remember things through vision. The study aimed to design and evaluate learning through reading conceptual framework by multimedia stories. The subjects are 16 deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children, aged 10 to14, from two elementary schools for the deaf in Thailand. The reading experienced with experimental multimedia and the control (teachers without multimedia) groups were designed and conducted over a 20-week period in each school. The evaluation was conducted including the observation, interviews with instructors, DHH and DHH' parents. There was a significant increase in vocabulary learning skills of the DHH children in the experimental group (Z = 2.53*, Z = 2.53*) and a non-significant effect in the control group (Z = 1.58*, Z = −2.38*). The result shows that DHH in the experimental perception with words and sentences, while in the class DHH ability for learning and concentrating on multimedia will be till the end.