Development of Multimedia to Enhance Thai Communication Skills for Visually Impaired Students

Abstract

This study aimed to develop multimedia learning materials to enhance the communication skills of Thai university students who had visual impairments at the ST2RU (Special Education Center, Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University). The study aimed to analyze the instructional problems of visually impaired students, create the multimedia Learning Materials to encourage the four skills of communication in Thai language namely listening, speaking, reading and writing, and assess the effectiveness of the created multimedia Learning Materials. The subjects were 11 undergraduate visual impairment students in the target group selected using purposive sampling and five experts in special education and multimedia technology. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and paired t-tests, in-depth interviews, a communication skills test to assess Thai communication skills, and ratings of language quality on the multimedia form. The results indicated that the LISL's obstacle for students with visual impairments was not the lack of students learning potential, but limited accessibility to adaptive instructional media and technology involving difficulties accessing digital files that are not compatible with screen reading software. The multimedia package built comprised 12 audio based learning units of three levels of difficulty (easy, moderate and difficult) which incorporated all four communication skills. A significant difference was observed between students' pre-test (M = 11.27) and post-test (M =15.55) scores based on a t-test (t = 21.90, p < .001) following the implementation. The students and the experts rated the materials extremely high in terms of both suitability (M = 4.64 ratings) and satisfaction (M = 4.48 ratings). From the results, it is found that the use of accessibility-oriented, audio-based multimedia can effectively support the Thai communication skills of visually impaired learners in an effective and meaningful way, which can subsequently be used in education for broader purposes.