Investigation of Instructional Design on Reading Comprehension Affect the Demand for Mobile Application for Students with Learning Disabilities

This research aims to investigate the current teaching methods for reading comprehension that affect the demand for mobile application for students with learning disabilities (LDs). This research examines the factors that significantly impact on the application of visual language-mind maps with stories and Thai traditional folk tales for teaching reading comprehension via mobile application. The instruments used in the study are questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The collected samples consist of 423 students with LDs at elementary level (grades 4-6), and 36 teachers in teaching Thai, from 17 schools located in Bangkok, Thailand. All of them are respondents to the questionnaires and 17 teachers were invited to attend semi-structured interviews. The findings show that students have the greatest need for learn with stories and Thai traditional folk tales, with an average of 4.55. Secondly, students are motivated using rewarding technique with the mean of 4.17, followed by using mind maps to summarize stories with the mean of 4.05. These values are consistent with the teacher's point of view. Additionally, the results from semi-structured interviews suggest that the new instructional design should integrate mind maps into multimedia folk tales application. Consequently, the findings emphasize the need for mobile applications in order to improve reading comprehension skill for students with LDs in learning Thai language.