Keywords

1 Introduction

During Covid19, most of the world has switched to distance education in fear of more spread of the pandemic. This sudden change has put most of school students in confusion which had an impact on their schooling attitude, hence their exam results. In the UAE, the government has tried their best to eliminate, or at least, lessen this fear by providing teachers with trainings required to overcome these non-precedential circumstances. They also provided schools with facilities and equipment to ensure students’ easy accessibility of resources and materials needed to continue learning as smoothly as possible (Ati & Guessoum, 2010).

Reading comprehension is a complex skill taught online as a part of the English course delivered to secondary students. It requires connecting points to create a meaning or meanings that are partially derived from prior knowledge. It is an everyday skill that people practice all the time intentionally or unintentionally, yet at school, students should master reading comprehension skills that are developed in classrooms to understand all subjects and pass their exams (Destari, 2010).

1.1 Research Questions

  1. 1.

    Does on-line education have a significant relationship with students’ levels in reading comprehension?

    1. A.

      Is there a significant difference between the scores of reading exams (on-campus and online)?

    2. B.

      Is there a relationship between the total scores of the two exams and the reading skills mastered in each learning situation?

  2. 2.

    Do students’ level of Knowledge in ICT and the Benefits of online education have an impact on their Students’ Rating of Online Education?

2 Literature Review

2.1 Conceptual Framework

Many concepts can be discussed in this section to give a comprehensive account of this topic such as: reading comprehension and online education. Reading Comprehension is the capability to read, process, and comprehend written material (Butterfuss et al., 2020). Online Education is the use of information technologies and communications to assist in the development and acquisition of knowledge from faraway areas (Basilaia & Kvavadze, 2020).

2.2 Theoretical Framework

Many theories have discussed reading comprehension, online learning and students’ perception and attitudes. However, the study in hand will discuss the Structural Theory, The Digital Native Theory, and Behaviourism.

The Structural Theory:

It is hard for L2 students to understand written texts for many reasons such as the limited vocabulary knowledge and the text structure and cohesion. Moreover, the text features can influence cognitive process that govern reading comprehension (Jake Follmer & Sperling, 2018) as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
An illustration. A funnel head has 3 circles labeled text organization, vocabulary, and cohesion. A downward arrow below, points to text comprehension.

The structural theory and reading comprehension

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The Digital Native Theory:

It is believed that nowadays students are digital natives as they were born during the digital revolution (Von der Heiden et al., 2011), so they prefer working and gaming online.

Behaviourism:

A behaviour can be due to some external and/or internal causes (Whiteley, 1961). In this case, the external cause is the sudden shift to online education. On the other hand, Skinner (2011) identified Behaviourism as the philosophy of human behaviour. According to him, behaviour is not about cause-and-effect connection, but it is about a set of functional actions that take place in a certain order such as the pandemic, social distancing and e-learning.

2.3 Literature Review

The Benefits of Online Learning on Reading Comprehension: Recently, using technology has been proved successful in improving students’ levels of performance in many subjects including reading comprehension. Many studies have been conducted to identify the type of impact of online education on reading comprehension. The studies of Zidat and Djoudi (2010) and Ciampa (2012), have proved that using technology, multimedia and games increased students’ opportunities to gain more reading skills. Other studies have revealed the important role of online reading in improving the level of performance of poor readers which, consequently, improved their reading comprehension skills.

The Impact of Students’ Satisfaction on Their Levels of Performance: Many studies have confirmed the positive relationship between students’ satisfaction and behaviour, and their levels of performance in different contexts. In their studies, Sapri et al. (2009), Dhaqane and Afrah (2016) proved that teaching and learning methods used in the higher education institutes had a significant impact on students’ satisfaction which consequently improved their levels of performance. Another study. Furthermore, the study conducted on Vietnamese College students, Salehi et al. (2014) found out that students with ICT knowledge can feel comfortable learning online.

3 Methodology

This quantitative study will examine the impact of online education on students’ reading comprehension skills and the impact of their ICT knowledge on their satisfaction and behaviour towards online learning. To do so, the study will compare 10th graders’ results in reading comprehension prior and during distance learning, and analyse the data collected via a survey that will be dispatched to the same students.

3.1 Quantitative Research Paradigms

Paradigms can be considered the ‘worldview’ or ‘sets of beliefs’ that govern the research approaches and methods and lead to answer the research questions (Cohen et al., 2018). It is suitable to discuss as it underpins the quantitative approach.

post-Positivism: This theory underpins the quantitative approach as it is concerned with numbers and statistics. According to Alakwe (2017), post-positivists believe that knowledge is extracted from data that is statistically analysed. This knowledge can be generalizable in similar contexts if showing the same reality observed. This theory is also concerned with decreasing human bias by testing pure data that is not yet interpreted by people.

3.2 Research Methods

There are two instruments used in this study: the first one is 105 10th graders’ scores in 2 reading comprehension quizzes. The first one was administered at school before the pandemic and the second one was administered online during the pandemic to determine the significance in difference of means using descriptive data and ‘Paired t-test’ on SPSS.

The second tool was a survey to collect data from the same students regarding their attitudes toward the online education phenomenon, the challenges they might have faced while implementing the online education and the level of satisfaction. The survey was conducted anonymously to guarantee objectivity and privacy. The survey used Likert scale in all questions for easier collection of responses.

The survey was adopted from two published studiesFootnote 1: (Simpson, 2012; Al-Azawei & Lundqvist, 2015). Surveys are used to collect data in the quantitative approach due to the vast development in technology (Mathers et al., 2009).

3.3 Sampling

A sample is a part of the population chosen to represent the whole population. The population targeted is 10th graders, and the sample is 105 female students in a private school in Ajman. There are many types of sampling, but the researcher used the convenience sampling technique due to the nature and logistics of the study during the pandemic (Acharya et al., 2013).

4 Result Analysis and Discussion

The study showed that there is a significant positive relationship between online education and students’ improvement in reading skill, yet their satisfaction with and perception of online education is not necessarily congruent with the ICT services provided.

4.1 Question No. 1 and Sub Questions A&B

To answer Q.1, sub-questions A&B will be answered first to be able to find out if there is an impact of online teaching on students’ levels of performance in reading comprehension skills.

Sub-Question A: Is there a significant difference between the scores of reading exams (on-campus and online)? The null hypotheses are: H0: “there is no significant difference in mean between the scores of on-campus reading test and the online reading test” while the alternative hypothesis (H1) is: “there is a significant difference in mean between the scores of on-campus reading test and the online reading test’. A ‘paired t-test’ was conducted to confirm or reject the null hypothesis (H0) (Table 1).

Table 1 Paired t-test, the significance in difference...etc.
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As the significance factor is P =.732 is higher than α = .05 (P > α), it means that there is no statistically significant difference in means of the scores of the two tests, so the previous results failed statistically to reject the null hypothesis which states that “there is no significant difference in mean between the scores of on-campus’ reading test and the online reading test” with 95% confidence.

Sub Question B: Is there a relationship between the total scores of the two exams and the reading skills mastered in each learning context? A correlation test will be used to answer the question.

To determine the relationship between the previous variables, correlation tests will be used. The null hypothesis (H0) is “there is no significant relationship between reading skills acquired in each educational context and the tests conducted”. P = 0, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) is: “there is a significant relationship between reading skills acquired in each educational contexts and the tests conducted” P ≠ 0).

The following Tables 2 and 3, show an overall statistically significant positive relationship between the acquired reading skills and the scores of reading tests whether on-campus or online. There is also a significant difference in means between the reading skills acquired online and those acquired at school in favor for the online context.

Table 2 The correlation between the skills acquired on-campus and the on-campus test scores
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Table 3 The correlation between online acquired skills and online test scores
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Does on-line education have a significant relationship with students’ levels in reading comprehension? The percentages of students’ attendance will be used as a reflection of the impact of e-learning as students used to join classes every day. The hypotheses of this questions are the null hypothesis (H0) is: “There is no significant relationship between the percentage of students’ attendance and their scores in the online reading test”. (p = 0), and the alternative hypothesis (H1) is: “There is a significant relationship between the percentage of students’ attendance and their scores in the online reading test” (p ≠ 0). A Pearson correlation test was used to confirm or reject the null hypothesis (Table 4).

Table 4 The correlation between students’ percentage of attendance and online reading test scores
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Coefficient (r) is 0.346. This shows a positive relationship, and it cannot be considered a relatively strong relationship as it is not close to +1. The p value is .001 < alpha value .05. This means that the results statistically reject the null hypothesis and confirms the alternative hypothesis (H1): “Statistically, there is a significant relationship between the percentage of students’ attendance and their scores in the online reading test” Consequently, all the previous results of question 1 and the sub questions A&B prove the fact that there is an overall positive significant relationship between online education and reading comprehension skills acquired and the overall online reading tests score. The previous results conform with Zidat and Djoudi (2010) and Ciampa (2012) that the online education is beneficial in relation to reading comprehension skills acquisition.

4.2 Do Students’ Level of Knowledge in ICT and the Benefits of Online Education Have an Impact on Students’ Rating of Online Education?

A survey was conducted on n = (105) to measure students’ knowledge in and satisfaction with ICT. The null hypothesis (H0) is: “There is no significant correlation between students’ level of knowledge in ICT and their Recognition of the online education benefits on their overall rating of online education”. The alternative hypothesis (H1) is: “There is a significant correlation between students’ level of knowledge in ICT and their Recognition of the online education benefits on their overall rating of online education.”

A Linear Regression test was conducted to get answers to the previous question (Table 5).

Table 5 The relationship between students' ICT knowledge and their satisfaction with online reading
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The previous table shows that: P value of the predictor ICT is .432 > alpha value .05 which means that the relationship between ICT and students’ satisfaction is not significant, yet the relationship between the Benefits of online education and satisfaction is significant as P =.001 < α = .05, so there is a significant relationship between the benefits of online education and students’ satisfaction which conforms with Whiteley (1961) that their satisfaction (effect) is a result of the benefits they are aware of (cause), yet there is no significant relationship between ICT knowledge and students’ satisfaction. This agrees with Skinner (2011) as students’ negative behaviour and perception of online education is not a result of their lack of knowledge, and it can be a philosophy that has emerged due to other emotional and social factors such as the lack of socialization caused by distance learning.

5 Conclusion, Implications, and Research Significance

Conducting the previous tests, some findings can be highlighted, and some conclusions can be made accordingly.

5.1 Conclusion

The tests conducted show that:

  • There is a significant impact of online learning on improving the reading comprehension tests’ scores.

  • These results have confirmed that there is a significant impact of reading skills gained in both educational contexts and the reading tests scores in both contexts.

  • The study also has proven that there is a positive relation between students’ satisfaction with online education and their improvement in reading skills, yet the relationship between students’ perceptions of online education and the ICT services provided to them.

5.2 Implications and Suggestions

Implications: The hypotheses confirmed in this study can indicate that the types of teaching materials can have a great impact on students’ satisfaction and performance. Using versatile activities and different websites can decrease the boredom and monotony that students might feel in actual classrooms.

Suggestions: Using creative reading material can motivate students to study and practice, so it will be much better to use online reading comprehension resources and activities even after going back to school. Moreover, students can have the chance to study in virtual classes and practice e-reading activities even when they are back to school for at least one school class. This will enable students to enjoy reading and practicing using reading comprehension skills more effectively.

5.3 Research Significance

The results of the study agree partially with the previous studies in that domain, yet it does not agree with the results of other studies about the impact of ICT services on students’ satisfaction with online education. As most studies focused on tertiary students. This study can encourage other researchers to further investigate the context of high school students’ satisfaction and its relationship with ICT services which might reveal new dimensions that might enrich research and become new references to other scholars.