The bars that come in front of and after the -44 are known as absolute value signs and they indicate for you to make the number in between them positive. So in this case the answer you would get is 44.
I hope I explained it well enough that you will understand these types of questions :D
Anything within the absolute value signs takes on a positive value, technically the absolute value signs are to denote "magnitude" not direction, it is a scalar quantity not a vector quantity. So in this case |-44|=44
