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Figure 1: Theoretical Framework

In the Philippines, an alarming number of children fail to master simple mathematical concepts that are necessary and foundational for the entirety of mathematics. Deficiency in mastering these mathematical building blocks often leads to underachievement in higher math due to knowledge insufficiency in dealing with more complicated numbers. One of these knowledge deemed as an important concept that students must know is Fractions. According to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008), having difficulties in this topic may hinder one’s further development in mathematics. This is the reason why in the DEPED K to 12 curriculum, Fractions are taught as early as third grade. Unfortunately, despite this being one of the fundamentals in Mathematics, Filipino students in higher grade levels still tend to struggle with this topic. Based on a research conducted by Gagani and Diano Jr. (2019), in Lapu-Lapu City, Eighth-grade students are still said to

Figure 1: Theoretical Framework

have difficulties in solving fractions, which should have been known as their procedural knowledge. It is mentioned that this learning is usually dependent on their conceptual knowledge, the process in which they gain understanding regarding the principles of the topic. With this knowledge, the group’s application, SipnayApp, aims to help with the country’s problem regarding Filipino students’ lack of proficiency in math fundamentals, specifically about fractions, by adding to the emerging educational applications existing nowadays. SipnayApp aims to help learners further understand a course subject through the inclusion of images, audios, videos, exercises, texts, etc., suitable for their generation that could lead them to their academic mastery of their chosen course subject.

Figure 2: Procedural Framework

In this study, a quasi-experimental research design was used as an approach to assess the effectiveness of SipnayApp on Grade 7 students’ comprehension of fractions. It involved a comparison between their test scores before and after (pre-test and post-test) the intervention of SipnayApp during the three review sessions given. All participants underwent the three phases namely: the pre-intervention period (undertaking a pre-test), intervention period (using the SipnayApp application), and post-intervention period (undertaking a post-test).

As for the application itself, the learning cycle and the user interface elements that the group hadcovered in the earlier chapters were taken into account while creating the syllabus, which arranged the material and flow of the course outline of SipnayApp. With the participant selection and recruitment, they were determined through simple random sampling with the use of a random number generator. An email with a consent form attached, explaining the research and its objectives, was sent out to all of the selected students;

Figure 2: Procedural Framework

this led to a total of 24 students for all the four sections of the Grade 7 level gathered by the researchers since only such a number of students were able to undergo the whole process. In addition, as part of the data collection, the group created tests which sought validation from the Math Area of Saint Theresa’s College of Quezon City. These tests were specifically created to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the Grade 7 students when it comes to fraction proficiency, catering lessons that are being tackled in the app. Through this, researchers may identify the impact of SipnayApp as it may be reflected on the results of the post-tests.

○ Statistical Analysis:

In order to analyze the data acquired, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. In descriptive statistics, the frequency of a score obtained in the pretest and posttest assessments was displayed using the measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode). Apart from that, the standard deviation—a measure of dispersion—was employed to show the range of the scores. On the other hand, the paired t-test was employed in inferential statistics to demonstrate the

Figure 2: Procedural Framework

average difference between the pretest and posttest scores and to indicate whether or not to consider the usage of the SipnayApp app significantly improved students' fractional competency. It is also important to take note that because the participants were chosen at random, the information acquired for the test outcomes will be unrelated to any other observations.

○ Ethical Considerations:

The group considered ethical concerns such as the anonymity, informed consent, and voluntary participation of the participants which were mainly observed during sampling and data collection. Time and schedule conflicts were also experienced by both parties – the researchers and the participants which then leads us to adjusting certain aspects like the day of the tests, day of review, and the number of participants.

Based on the duration of application use, the student’s engagement was low. The measures of central tendency of the data show that SipnayApp was used for an average of 10–11 minutes, and its standard deviation of 2,87 concretizes the accuracy of these values since the spread was not far from the mean.

Conversely, according to the ratings, the effectiveness of the application interface—which integrated the three I’s learning cycle—was strongly effective. From the respondents, 61% found the interface fully effective, 22% said it was ordinarily effective, and 17% were neutral. These results show now issues in terms of the effectiveness of the interface, but the low student engagement implies a cause behind the ineffectiveness.

The pre-test (A) and post-test (B) scores imply that there is no significant difference (p=0.076). Alongside this, most of the students obtained scores of 4, 5, and 7 during both the tests.

The mean score for pre-test and post-testrespectively was 7.46 and 8.58, indicating that most of the participants did not correctly answer half of the 20-item test. As such, the results were not statistically significant, and it did not align with the hypothesis. However, with the results, the group was able to assess the efficacy of SipnayApp and somehow allow the participants to improve their fraction proficiency.

There were no extreme outliers. The outliers shown in the data were not far apart, as there were still students who obtained two-digit scores lower than 15. Minimum score obtained by the students during the pretest was four (4). For the posttest, it was two (2). Maximum score obtained for both was 15. Though the majority of students agreed that the application interface was effective in presenting the topic, this was not in line with the results of their fractionproficiency after the intervention which had no significant difference compared to their initial proficiency.

Based on all results gathered, the SipnayApp application was unsuccessful in improving their proficiency based on the data collected from the students’ post-test scores, such that these did not have a significance difference from the participants’ pre-test scores. Furthermore, this could be backed up by the descriptive results, which show that the students’ engagement when it comes to using the application was low based on the duration they used the application for reviewing, despite the majority of the students considering the application’s interface, which integrates the three I’s (introduce, interact, integrate) learning cycle, effective when it comes to presenting the topic to them.

In addition, researchers delved into the efficacy of implementing a learning cycle for students to get higher scores in their posttest. Based on the data collected, it is evident that no significant difference was observed; this suggests that

implementing such a learning cycle may not always lead to students’ improvements. The results of this study may contribute to the continual improvement of educational applications as a whole by providing data that may allow a restructuring of the experimental set-up. Nevertheless, despite the data showing no significant difference, there are still students whose scores improved after using SipnayAPP. This implies that it may have been possible that the application is effective in reaching its goal, regardless of the data not meeting the required threshold. Considering repetitive technical difficulties hindered us from strictly following the schedule, this may have affected the results, causing inconvenience for the participants to access and explore the application. Also, participants were only able to review for one session for the reason of having to consider their school schedule and research time restraints. These factors could explain the results and findings gathered from the experiment and analysis.

Considering that the main factor that affected the results proving the effectivity of the application

was the system and procedure itself, an improvement that could be done on this research is thatthere should be a proper and strict schedule that could allow sufficient time for the Grade 7 students to use the application, since they were tasked to do their independent study time when using the applications at their own homes due to the overwhelming schedule given to both the researchers and the participants. In addition, it is recommended that the researchers could also use other app builders wherein they could apply all the 4 types of learning, namely Kinesthetic, Audio, Visual, and Writing, since the MIT App Inventor isn’t compatible with apple devices but has a feature where they could place a video and let it automatically play. However, it is only limited to android devices since the gadgets provided were all android tablet which would have

Considering that the main factor that affected the results proving the effectivity of the application was the system and procedure itself, an improvement that could be done on this research is that there

should be a proper and strict schedule that could allow sufficient time for the Grade 7 students to use the application, since they were tasked to do their applied all 4 types of learning, but since the students were pushed to use the application at their own homes, there was a possibility that they couldn’t access the video given if they were using an apple device which means that it was harder for the students to navigate the app. Therefore, restructuring could help with the betterment of application, helping users improve their fraction skills and understanding through the SipnayApp. Moreover, despite all things mentioned, as SipnayApp was designed with an interactive interface, this study further supports the notion that an interactive design for applications may increase engagement and focus, especially for educational purposes. Despite not being able to yield a significant difference in grade 7 students’ abilities on fractions, the findings acquired from our research

may be used to further improve applications that are already existing and or being developed. Also, SipnayApp aimed to integrate learning styles as it suggests exploration in optimizing these integrations for more effective learning outcomes. Despite not achieving its intended objective, the interactive design of SipnayApp reinforces the notion that interactive interfaces can enhance engagement and concentration, in environments.

Figures:

Nicole
"Nocturnal Researcher"

Nathalie
"Crammer"

Princess
"MIT Queen"

Darlene

Feliza

Angeline
"Pen Pal"

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