Mitigating reading plight: igniting motivation with Interactive Immersive Reading Module (IIRM)

With rapid advancement of technology, learners’ attitude towards reading materials manifests a declining trend. One of the common grounds is lack of stimuli from the plain pages of books which leads to demotivation to read, encompassing poor reading habits. Previous researchers also found that lack of motivation to read from a young age could be a major factor in sculpting the students in this digital era, where book pages have to compete with vibrant screens. Hence, the aim of developing Interactive Immersive Reading Module (IIRM) is to ignite motivation to read from early stages and to improve the students’ learning efficacy by designing, developing, and evaluating the effectiveness of using an immersive digital book. A total of 60 pupils from intermediate level in two primary schools were involved in this research. ADDIE model was used as research methodology in this research and the research design was the quasi-experimental method, employing the pre and post-test. After analysing the data, it is revealed that the participants became more engaged at reading English materials and they showed a positive attitude towards the material. In addition, their memory retention of the given input was also better, as the experimental group’s result indicated. The majority agreed that they would be more excited to read digital books and manifested the desire of having their textbook in this digital form. Thus, this study will provide new perspectives in fostering motivation to read autonomously, provided future research continues to explore its boons in a larger sample size.