In this paper, we describe the hypothesis and the design of an empirical study to investigate the impact of adopting an ontology-driven modularization (ODM) technique and an ontology-neutral modularization (ONM) technique on the comprehension of the resulting modules of the conceptual model. More specifically, we intend to measure the impact of these modularization techniques on the comprehension and understandability of the modules by novice modelers – a category of users that greatly benefit from such modularization techniques. While much effort in ontology-driven modularization has been devoted into maintaining the semantic aspects of the original conceptual model during the modularization process, this research effort aims to contribute by performing an empirical validation of such techniques. Since little empirical research has yet been conducted in this area, we plan to perform an experimental study in order to capture the differences between adopting an ontology-driven modularization technique and an ontology-neutral modularization technique.