Improving English Skills of Grade 9 Students in Educational Opportunity Expansion Schools under the Office of Chiang Mai Primary Education Service Area 2 by Using Computer Assisted Instruction

Abstract

This research is process-oriented, aiming at applying “Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction” and computer assisted instruction to designing a suitable learning tool for rural students in Chiang Mai. The purposes of this research were to construct and evaluate the effectiveness of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) in order to prepare the participating students for the Ordinary National Education Test (O-NET), and to compare the students’ English skills before and after the implementation of the CAI. The population of this research was 965 grade 9 students from 53 Educational Opportunity ExpansionSchools under the supervision of Officeof Chiang MaiPrimary Education Service, Area 2. The first phase of the project involved a study where the students’ proficiency and needs, the English teachers’ ideas for lesson design, the experts’ suggestions on developmental considerations for CAI as well as the O-NET test blueprint were examined. The second phase involved the CAI design, where Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction were utilized. The final phase involved the implementation of the CAI. The findings revealed that the efficiency of the CAI was at 87.03/87.38 which was higher than the specified efficient standard criteria of80/80. At a 0.001 significance level, the students' achievement scores increased after the use of the CAI. Based on the findings it was recommended that Computer Assisted Instruction be implemented for improving the English performance of students with low proficiency