EDMODO AS ONLINE ASSESSMENT TOOL: TO IMPROVE EFL STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION

The study's objective was to examine if using Edmodo as an online assessment tool can improve students’ reading comprehension of recount text in e-learning. E-learning is considered an effective way to facilitate a better learning experience for students, especially in the assessment aspect. Formative assessment is a critical component of education that enables teachers and students to evaluate and improve their performance. Pre-experimental research with one group pretest and posttest was applied in this study. The participants in the study were thirty six tenth-grade senior high students in Krian, East Java. The instrument was pre and posttest consisting of objective and subjective tests. A paired sample t-test in SPSS 25 was used to analyze the data. The confidence interval of the difference used is 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted if the value of Sig. (2-tailed) is less than 0.05. The result shows that online formative assessment through Edmodo can improve students’ reading comprehension skills. It is clear that Edmodo can serve as a prominent online assessment tool for students to assist them in improving their reading comprehension skills in e-learning. It is recommended teachers should continue to look for alternative platforms to conduct online assessments for e-learning to keep


INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of technology in the 21 st century offers many opportunities to assist the process of teaching and learning. Lee & Nuruddin Hidayat (2019) state that adopting technology in the field of education is essential to strengthen the young generation's potential skills since it is considered as a prominent tool for the education process. The EFL teachers should create modernizing current teaching technique, materials, new methods, and tools that are relevant with the students' characteristics that is labelled as digital natives. The use of technology in learning process, e-learning, can motivate students to engage English learning process. Elearning is a process of acquiring competency and knowledge through a learning system by employing internet-based technology (Hadiyanto, 2019). Students also become more interested in changing conventional school settings into e-learning because it makes the learning process can be possibly held anywhere or at any time.
Edmodo is one of the advanced technology's products which can facilitate and make the process of e-learning becomes more interesting. It can be easily accessed via computers or mobile phones. Moreover, Edmodo, which is also called "Facebook for education," is one of the most commonly applied learning media in EFL and has been ranked recently as one of the best learning tools for the education process, including in ESL and EFL classes (Pardede, 2017). This educational learning network offers various features for assessment process as well. By utilizing Edmodo, teachers can assign quizzes and tasks, give feedback, gather completed assignments, assign marks, award badges, save and share content, run surveys, and deliver messages to certain student or the entire class. Another beneficial feature provided by Edmodo is 'Add to Grade-book' which enables teachers to automatically input students' scores to teachers' progress page. Moreover, using Edmodo can save teachers' time since it provides automatic grading for the assessments.
When teachers use Edmodo to teach English, particularly reading comprehension, they do not only focus on how to teach but also how to assess reading skills. Assessment is regarded as essential component in the teaching and learning process since teachers must evaluate learners' skills (Alghammas, 2020). Therefore, assessment has a fundamental role in the education process (Hassan Al-Ahdal & Alqasham, 2020;Abduh, 2021). Webber (2012) also states that assessment is considered as activities that are essentially planned to encourage student learning. The role of assessment in the educational field, in general, is important because it can enhance the quality of the learning process.
Based on the current conceptualization of reading comprehension assessment, which are standardized assessment and classroom-based assessment, this research has focused on the implementation of classroom-based assessment. This kind of assessment is typically known as formative assessment which is conducted by measuring the skills and knowledge acquired based on course content that has been learned. Formative assessment is the assessment used to provide feedback that can enhance teaching and learning process (Abduh, 2021). Thus, formative assessment is important because it is designed to give an ongoing evaluation for students and teachers to make learning process as effective as possible.
When conducting an assessment, teachers must examine the aim of each question of the test and then construct the right question to achieve the objective (Theresia, 2021). Therefore, they need to know the categorization of reading comprehension skills. Barrett (1972, as cited in Erten & Karakas, 2007 provided categorizations of reading comprehension. He divided comprehension into four categories, which are literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation. In addition, Burns, Paul C., et al. (1992, as cited in Alwasi 2020 classified seven types of reading comprehension questions, they are questions about main idea, detail, vocabulary, sequence, inference, evaluation, and creative response. Nowadays, people have been competing to utilize the advantages of technology in many aspects of educational field. Therefore, teachers are expected to be able to adapt amidst the rapid growth of internet-based technology used in the learning process. This resulted in the switch of paper-based formative assessment to online formative assessment. It is expected by teachers to enhance the students' reading comprehension scores. Besides, the generation of students in the 21 st century, known as digital natives, are used to apply various technological tools and are well accustomed to modern technology. (Alghammas, 2020). Hence, online assessment is expected by teachers to increase the students' engagement and interest to participate. Edmodo as an educational learning network presents several assessment forms for online reading comprehension assessment. The reading comprehension tasks and questions are accommodated by the 'Quiz' feature provided in Edmodo. There are several types of classroom-based assessment question that can be selected such as in the form of true/false, multiplechoice, fill in the blanks, multiple answers, matching, and short essay. Teachers can also add attachments to make questions visually more engaging and varied for the students.
Furthermore, by using Edmodo to conduct an online assessment, which is a result of integrating technology in education, it could give students a chance to get a better outcome in the assessment process compared to offline assessment. If a teacher conducts an offline assessment, the surroundings of a classroom sometimes does not provide a comfortable atmosphere because of noises that possibly disturb students when reading a passage. Many students have reported that they felt anxious when they were assessed during the whole process. The tense ambience inside a classroom during a test can overwhelm the students as well. According to Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri (2016), students' reading comprehension process can be influenced by a variety of things, including their environment and anxiety. Students who experience anxiety might not fully grasp the instructions. It potentially causes confusion and poor comprehension of the reading task. By conducting online reading comprehension assessment, teachers can avoid these negative factors since students can do the online assessment at home or in any other places where they will be able to create their own comfort zone. That is why the study focuses on the implementation of formative assessment through Edmodo because both teachers and students may experience advantages regarding to the process of online reading comprehension assessment.
This research used recount text as the learning material to measure students' reading comprehension. Based on the current curriculum in Indonesia, recount text is one of the texts that tenth grade students should study and master. A recount text is a genre of text that recounts and describes prior experiences by chronologically retelling occurrences (Knapp & Watkins, 2005). Orientation, events, and reorientation are all components of the recount text's structure. The purpose of this text is to reiterate past events in order to either inform or entertain the reader.
In educational research, numerous research had been conducted to determine the benefit of online assessment in e-learning since it is necessary to know its significance if teachers want to integrate internet-based technology for assessment. Alruwais et al. (2018) have reported students prefer online assessment than paper-based assessment because it offers flexibility, practicality, and immediate feedback. Furthermore, Alghammas (2020) supports that online assessment is more effective than paper-based assessment. He has concluded that overall the participants expressed a positive perception of the implementation of online assessment. Besides, Ekmekçi (2016) and Sumardi & Muamaroh (2020) have examined the use of Edmodo for EFL digital class and online assessment tool could decrease the students' anxiety, and students have positive perception towards its effectiveness as an online assessment tool.
Most of the related researches merely have investigated the students' perception about Edmodo as an online assessment tool. Thus, to fill the research gap, the aim of this study is to investigate whether Edmodo could also improve students' reading comprehension skills, especially in recount text. Furthermore, this research can be used to introduce Edmodo, as an educational network, to English teachers who need to utilize a suitable online platform that can accommodate them to conduct online assessment for reading comprehension. Besides, by conducting this research, it will provide more insights about the advantages of Edmodo which offer a practical and an engaging process for EFL students in improving their reading comprehension skills through online formative assessment. Based on the explanation above, this research should answer the following research question: Can Edmodo as an online assessment tool improve EFL students' reading comprehension?

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Pre-experimental research with one group pretest-posttest design was used to conduct this study. The one-group pretest-posttest design was typically carried out in three phases: (1) administering a pretest to determine the dependent variable; (2) implementing the treatment to the participants; and (3) administering a posttest to determine the dependent variable again. The differences associated with the implementation of the experimental treatment are then assessed by comparing the scores of pretest and posttest.
This study took place at one of senior high school in Krian, East Java, Indonesia. The population of this research were all the tenth-grade students at this senior high school. Then, it was used purposive sampling to get samples drawn from the population which were chosen to be typical and representative of the population (Ary et al., 2014). Therefore, the sample were 36 students in X-2 class which consisted of 12 males, and 24 females as a homogeneous class. Their reading competence was at average level.
The instrument used was pretest and posttest in the form of objective and subjective questions. Objective question is often criticized on the grounds since they are simpler than subjective question. Accordingly, both types were used to complement each other. The test consisted of thirty items of various question forms. They were multiple-choice, matching, fill-in the blanks, true/false, and short essays.
In this research, content validity was used to determine whether the test had good validity or not. It used an expert's opinion as a validator to examine the tests and determine if they were acceptable or not. The test instrument was considered accurate based on the test items' relevance to the learning objectives in Indonesia's 2013 basic competency curriculum.
Another key factor to consider was reliability test that was used to check the test's quality. A try-out was conducted, then the reliability of 27 objective question items were assessed by utilizing the Kuder-Richardson 20 formula: Meanwhile, the reliability of 3 subjective question items in the form of short essay were measured using Cronbach's Alpha formula in SPSS 25. The result was showed in the Table 1. Based on the calculations above, the results of the reliability coefficient were 0.727 for the objective questions and 0.770 for the subjective questions. According to Ary et al. (2014), if the reliability coefficient is close to 1.00, the instrument has low error and high reliability. It was concluded that the research instrument was reliable and could be utilized to measure reading comprehension skills of the students. Table 2 showed the timeline of data collection. Thereafter, the obtained data were analyzed quantitatively using statistics. This method was utilized to find a significant difference in students' reading comprehension before and after they experiencing online formative assessment through Edmodo. The data were then evaluated using a paired sample t-test in SPSS 25 to find the difference. Because this study only had one group of participants with two sets of scores, a paired sample t-test was utilized. The paired sample t-test, like many statistical procedures, includes two opposing hypotheses: the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. The confidence interval of the difference used is 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted if the value of Sig. (2tailed) is less than 0.05. Conversely, the null hypothesis (Ho) is accepted and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is rejected if the value of Sig. (2-tailed) is greater than 0.05.

Results
As previously stated, the researcher intended to investigate if there would be an improvement in students learning outcomes before and after formative online reading comprehension assessment by utilizing Edmodo. The pretest and posttest results of students' reading comprehension appeared to have enhanced significantly (see Appendix).
The results of the students' reading comprehension achievement on pretest were lower compared to the result on posttest. It could be seen from their ability to achieve the learning objectives in Table 3. The Table 3 above has presented that the students' reading comprehension skills on pretest were still bad. It was stated that for the objective questions, most students were difficult in finding implicit information (43%), finding word meanings (46%), and finding word references (50%) in historical recount text. Meanwhile, for the subjective questions, the scores percentage obtained by students in evaluating the text was 30% and the lowest score percentage related to summarizing the text was only 22%.
The result of posttest has shown that students' reading comprehension skills improved in general and in particular the five reading skills that previously got a low percentage on the pretest results. The table above has shown the improvement of students' ability in finding implicit information (79%), finding word meanings, (80%), finding word references (89%), evaluating the text (81%), and summarizing the text (53%).
The results of the students' total score on pretest were then also sorted in the form of frequency and percentages using score criteria, as presented in Table 4, below: On the criteria listed above, 75 is the minimum criteria of mastery learning (KKM) for students at this school. There were 2 students (6%) who received very poor score criteria between 0-38, 15 students (42%) who got poor score criteria whose range is 39-74, and 16 students (44%) who got average score criteria ranging from 75-83. The other 3 students (8%) achieved good scores ranging from 84-92. None of the students achieved the excellent scores criteria (93-100) on pretest. The highest pretest score was 84, while the lowest was 35.
After that, Table 5 has shown the percentages and frequency of students' total score on posttest after they had received treatment that was conducted in the process of teaching and learning using Edmodo and an online formative assessment through Edmodo. The posttest scores of students improved, according to the findings. There was no student (0%) who achieved a very poor score. The percentage of students who got poor score criteria decreased from 15 (42%) to 13 individuals (36%). Besides, the percentages of students who achieved average, good, and excellent score criteria were also improved. There were 4 students (11%) who achieved average scores, 16 students (44%) with good scores, and 3 students (8%) who got excellent scores. The highest posttest score was 96, while the lowest was 54.
In order to find out the significant improvement by using Edmodo as an online assessment tool for students' reading comprehension, the researcher utilized a statistical test with paired sample t-test using SPSS 25. As a result, the following data in Table 6 and Table 7 are the outcomes: As shown in the table above, the pretest mean score was 67.08 and the N was 36. Meanwhile, the mean posttest score was 78.80, with an N of 36 also. Since the mean value of the posttest (78.80) was greater than the mean value of the pretest (67.08), it indicated that students' reading comprehension improved significantly. The data in Table 7 above has shown the result of paired sample t-test. The significance (2-tailed) value was 0.000. The interpretation of the paired sample t-test was taken from the following considerations. Since the confidence interval of the difference used is 0.05, therefore, if the value of Sig. (2-tailed) < 0.05, the null hypothesis (Ho) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted. Meanwhile, if the value of Sig. (2-tailed) > 0.05, the null hypothesis (Ho) is accepted and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is rejected. In this case, the value of Sig. (2-tailed) was 0.000, which was less than 0.05. Hence, the alternative hypothesis was accepted. After conducting statistical analysis, it can be proven that Edmodo as an online assessment tool can enhance the reading comprehension of tenth graders at a senior high school in Krian, East Java.

Discussion
The enhancement of students' achievement on posttest indicated that using Edmodo as an online assessment tool is an innovative way to conduct reading comprehension assessment in e-learning because of its practicality. Students could do their assessments where they felt comfortable and at their best time to complete them. They have had perception that they have more freedom to learn in e-learning, so it is convenient for them. It could also increase students' motivation, which has been identified as one of the significant factors for language learning in Indonesia (Sufyan et al., 2020). It is in line to Sumardi & Muamaroh (2020)'s previous study that state that Edmodo-based assessments help students feel less anxious while doing assignments. Since students can complete the given tasks in relaxing conditions instead of feeling anxious, online assessment through Edmodo is beneficial for students. Therefore, Edmodo as an online assessment tool in e-learning has the advantage that can help increase students' enthusiasm in doing their assessment as part of their learning process.
Moreover, the findings in this research have proven that online assessment using Edmodo not only gets positive perceptions from students but is also able to help improve students' learning outcomes. As stated in a recent study, students expressed positive attitudes towards the effective use of Edmodo as an online assessment tool (Ekmekçi, 2016). Students' reading comprehension skills increased after taking the Edmodo online formative evaluation, according to the findings of this research. Some of the reading comprehension skills that improved in this research were the students' ability to find implicit information, word meanings, and word references, evaluate text, and summarize texts. It is the result of utilizing Edmodo as an online assessment platform that is user-friendly and practical for e-learning that makes students easier to evaluate their learning progress through the online formative assessments given.
However, based on the percentage of students' posttest scores, it can be concluded that as an online assessment tool, Edmodo was more significant in improving reading comprehension skills for students who had acquired the average to good score criteria on the pretest. Meanwhile, for those who previously achieved very poor to poor score criteria on the pretest, Edmodo could still assist them in improving their reading comprehension ability, but it was less significant.
Despite that, Edmodo as an assessment tool is considered capable of fulfilling the purpose of conducting an online assessment process. The result of this study has shown that the mean value of students' posttest scores was higher than their pretest scores. Therefore, this assessment tool can help students to enhance their reading comprehension during the learning process by enabling them to actively participate in assessment processes and get feedback from teachers. As stated by Perera-Diltz & Moe (2014), the use of formative assessment in an online setting has been shown to improve learning results when done appropriately. Furthermore, by reviewing at the online assessment results, which are archived systematically in Edmodo, both students and the teacher can enhance the process of e-learning.
According to the description above, adopting Edmodo for online assessment in elearning has a beneficial impact on students' reading comprehension achievement. Since high school students in the 21 st century are digital natives, they can take the advantages of technological advancements that help them complete assessments more easily and comfortably. It implies that Edmodo, as an online assessment tool, offers an alternative way of formative assessment so that students can experience the assessment process better. Consequently, they can acquire better reading comprehension skills. Furthermore, because the alternative hypothesis was accepted as a result of the statistical evidence, it is concluded that using Edmodo as an online assessment tool can improve students' reading comprehension in e-learning.

CONCLUSION
It can be determined that Edmodo can serve as a prominent online assessment tool to assist students in improving their reading comprehension skills. Edmodo can be an alternative online assessment tool for reading comprehension in e-learning. It can also be used as a substitute for paper-based assessments due to its direct feedback and easyto-use features. As a free learning platform, Edmodo can provide online assessment facilities to all subject teachers in general and language teachers in particular since Edmodo offers students practicality and flexibility where they can experience an enjoyable reading comprehension assessment process.
It is suggested that teachers should continue to look for alternative platforms to conduct online assessments for e-learning to keep up with modern technological developments in the educational field. Besides, this research can potentially be utilized as a source of information for future research related to the utilization of online platforms for online assessment in e-learning. However, this study also has limitations that could be considered in future research. First, the study was focused on the use of Edmodo as an online assessment tool for tenth grade students as the participants. Second, it was mainly focused on investigating the advantage of Edmodo in improving students' reading skills in comprehending recount text. Therefore, it is suggested that future researchers investigate further the use of Edmodo as an online reading comprehension assessment tool for different grade levels and find out whether this online platform can also improve students' reading comprehension skills with different types of text as the reading material.