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and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ON A MULTIMODAL 
DIGITAL STORYTELLING BOOK USE IN A WRITING 

CLASS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC 

Mukminatus Zuhriyah  
Universitas Hasyim Asy’ari Tebuireng Jombang. Indonesia  

zoehrea@gmail.com 
 

Abstract  

This study aimed to describe the students’ perceptions toward the use of a 
multimodal digital storytelling book in the writing class during COVID-19 
pandemic. This research used a descriptive qualitative design. Meanwhile, the 
participants of this study were twenty students in the second semester of an 
English language education department in a private university located in East 
Java. The data were collected through the closed-ended questionnaires which 
were shared through Google Form. These questionnaires consisted of seven 
statements related to the use of a multimodal digital storytelling book in their 
writing class. After all the data were collected, then, the data were tabulated 
and calculated its frequency for each questionnaire item. The results of 
questionnaire analysis revealed that more than 85% of the students gave 
positive perceptions toward the use of a multimodal digital storytelling book in 
their writing class. Hopefully, the results of this study can become a reference 
for English teachers especially and language teachers generally when they teach 
writing online.  
 

Keywords: multimodal digital storytelling book, students’ perceptions, writing class  

INTRODUCTION  
COVID-19 pandemic has changed the education system from face-to-face 

meeting in the offline class into the full online learning. Dealing with this, 
United Nations (2020) has stimulated many innovation proposals to overcome 
the education problems because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world. In the 
field of language education, many educators from different countries have had 
to quickly respond to this condition so that the teaching and learning of 
languages, especially a foreign language learning, could still be delivered with 
the good quality (Brzoska, 2020; Reimers et al., 2020). Then, teachers and the 
students had to adapt this situation (Urbieta & Peñalver, 2021). Both the 
teachers and the students had to carry out the teaching and learning process 
from home.  

In Indonesia, this condition had happened since March, 2020. All of the 
teachers used the online tools for video conferences such as Google Meet, 
Zoom, Webex, etc (Atmojo & Nugroho, 2020). Then, Nugroho & 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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Mutiaraningrum (2020) explain that the teachers also used the online platforms 
such as WhatsApp, Google Classroom, Edmodo, Moodle, Telegram, Youtube, 
etc. Because almost all the teachers had implemented the same ways and online 
learning tools, gradually the students got bored with this online learning 
(Mindaningsih et al., 2022; Zuhriyah & Fajarina, 2022). The teachers had to be as 
creative as possible to handle their online classes (Zuhriyah & Fajarina, 2021). 
The teachers should be able to create an interesting learning atmosphere in their 
online classes. This was a duty for all teachers in order that their students had 
the good mastery for what they had learned. Dealing with this, to make the 
students easy their learning materials, the teachers also should be able to 
provide the interesting learning media in their online EFL classes. 

Media is a learning tool that helps the students understand the learning 
materials easily. Watrianthos et al. (2022) state that media is a tool of learning 
that can be used to enhance the learning quality. One of the media that can be 
used in this online learning is multimodal digital storytelling. Multimodal 
digital storytelling is basically narratives combined with voices, images, musics 
and videos that the people create based on their experiences and they upload 
them on the internet. According to Ladino (2017), multimodal digital 
storytelling is a way of presenting a story by integrating modes, such as: 
gestures, audio, videos, images, labels, and words and involving five senses to 
decode the message of the story and foster multisensory perception. 
Multimodal digital storytelling gives the students the chance to improve and  
showcase their multimodal meaning-making skills, play with languages and 
genres, become creative, and make others inspired (Buendgens-Kosten, 2021). 

Some studies have investigated the use of digital storytelling in the 
language teaching and learning. The results of these previous studies show that 
digital storytelling is able to develop the students’ language knowledge and 
literacy (Jones & Chapman, 2017; Widodo, 2016). Meanwhile, Lestariyana & 
Widodo (2018) found that digital storytelling could engange the students’ active 
paticipation in the language class and utilize different linguistic resources in 
their multimodal texts created. In addition, Urbieta & Peñalver (2021) had 
developed the rubric for assessing the digital storytelling created by the 
students in which assessed several aspects, such as vocabulary, adequacy, 
grammatical accuracy, phonological control, cohesion and coherence, audio-
visual design, editing and camera techniques, kinesics, proxemics and 
collaboration.  

Related to the implementation of multimodal digital storytelling in the 
English writing class, there are also some previous researchers having 
investigated these issues. Balaman (2018) carried out an experimental study in 
which the results showed that the students in the experimental group taught 
writing using digital storytelling-integrated writing instruction had higher 
writing ability than the students in the control group taught writing 
usingtraditional paper-based writing practices. Additionally, Puspitasari (2018) 
conducted the study about the use of digital storytelling in her writing class. 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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She explained her experience when using digital storytelling in her writing 
class. She conluded that the use of digital storytelling helped the students very 
much when they composed narrative writing.  

The gap for this study was that all those previous studies mentioned 
above were carried out before the pandemic of COVID-19. Then, the previous 
studies did not always investigate the perceptions of the students when the 
implementation of digital storytelling in their EFL classrooms, especially 
writing classes.  

So that, there were still scarce studies exploring the students’ perceptions 
toward the use of digital storytelling, especially multimodal digital storytelling 
book, in teaching and learning of writing. Therefore, the researcher in this 
present study conducted this research with the purpose to describe the 
perceptions of the students toward the use of multimodal digital storytelling 
book in their online writing class during COVID-19 pandemic.  
 

METHODS  
This study was conducted to find out the students’ perceptions toward the 

use of a multimodal digital storytelling book in the writing class. That is why 
this study used a descriptive qualitative research method. According to 
Moleong (2012), a qualitative study is a study that has the purpose to 
comprehend anything that the research subjects experience, such as behaviours, 
perceptions, motivations, etc. Sani et al. (2018) explain that a qualitative study is 
carried out to understand the social phenomenon from the views of the research 
participants. Then, this research also used a descriptive research method to 
describe the students’ perceptions toward the use of multimodal digital 
storytelling book in the writing class. A descriptive study has the purpose to 
describe the facts and the research participants’ characteristics in a certain area 
systematically (Sani et al., 2018).    

This study was conducted at the second semester students of an English 
language education department in a private university in East Java. Twenty 
students in this second semester became the participants of this study. To 
collect the data for this study, the researcher used questionnaires. Before 
collecting the data, the researcher gave the explanation about anything related 
to multimodal digital storytelling book to the students through Google Meet 
meeting. Meanwhile, the multimodal digital storytelling book itself used 
website of app.bookcreator.com. After giving the explanation, the researcher used 
the multimodal digital storytelling book in the online writing class for six 
meetings. After these six meetings, the students were given questionnaires 
consisting of seven closed questions using four Likert scales, namely strongly 
agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. These questionnaires were 
administered through Google Form.  

To analyze the data, the researcher first tabulated the results of the 
questionnaires and continued processing them. Afterwards, the researcher 
calculated the frequency of the answer of each questionaire item stating 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. After knowing the 
frequency, the researcher determined the categories on the questionnaire 
results. The answers selecting strongly agree and agree were categorized as a 
positive perception toward the use of multimodal digital storytelling book in 
the students’ online writing class. On the contrary, the answers selecting 
disagree and strongly disagree were categorized as a negative perception 
toward the use of the multimodal digital storytelling book in the students’ 
online writing class. 

 

FINDINGS  
The results of questionnaire analysis showed that most of the students 

gave positive perception to the implementation of multimodal digital 
storytelling in writing class. Most of them stated that the application of 
multimodal digital storytelling in their writing class could make them get the 
new knowledge and motivate them more in learning writing. The detail 
questionnaire results can be seen in the following table. 

Table 1. Results of Questionnaire Analysis 

Statements Strongly 
Agree 

Agree Disagree Strongly 
Disagree 

Perception 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book 
can give the new 
knowledge 

45% 50% 5% 0 Positive 

Learning writing 
using multimodal 
digital storytelling 
book is enjoyable 

45% 55% 0 0 Positive 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book is 
interesting to be 
applied in the 
writing class 

55% 40% 5% 0 Positive 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book 
stimulates the 
enthusiasm and 
challenge to 
enhance the writing 
ability 

50% 40% 10% 0 Positive 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book 
can motivate to 

45% 45% 5% 5% Positive 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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learn writing 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book 
boosts self-
confidence in 
writing 

40% 55% 5% 0 Positive 

Multimodal digital 
storytelling book is 
effective for 
learning to write 

55% 35% 5% 5% Positive 

Table 1 above shows that the majority of the students gave positive perceptions 
toward the use of multimodal digital storytelling book in the class of writing. 
The following is the detail description of the analysis results. 
 
The students got the new knowledge from the use of multimodal digital 
storytelling book  

45 % of twenty participants or 9 students stated that they strongly agreed 
if the use of multimodal digital storytelling book in the class of writing could 
give them the new knowledge. Meanwhile, 10 students (50% of the 
respondents) agreed and 5% or 1 student only disagreed. Based on those data, it 
can be known that 95% of the students had positive response to the statement 
that multimodal digital storytelling book in the class of writing gave the new 
knowledge. This was because they had not known what multimodal digital 
storytelling book in the class of writing was. After that, they got the knowledge 
how to use the multimodal digital storytelling book for learning writing. 

  
The students felt that learning writing using the ebook of multimodal digital 
storytelling book was enjoyable  

45% of 20 respondents or 9 students strongly agreed that learning writing 
using multimodal digital storytelling book was enjoyable. Then, 55% of 20 
respondents or 11 students agreed to this statement. No student disagreed or 
strongly disagreed that learning writing using multimodal digital storytelling 
book was enjoyable. These data showed that 100% of the students gave a 
postive perception that learning writing using multimodal digital storytelling 
book was enjoyable. It could be said that learning writing using multimodal 
digital storytelling  book can stimulate the students’ enjoyment in learning 
writing.  
 
Multimodal digital storytelling book is interesting to be applied in writing 
class  

Eleven students (55% of the participants) strongly agreed that the 
implementation of multimodal digital storytelling book in their writing class 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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was interesting. Eight students agreed with it and one student disagreed with it. 
So the students’ perception toward this statement was positive. 
 
Multimodal digital storytelling book could stimulate the students’ 
enthusiasm and challenge to enhance their writing ability 

50% of the respondents (10 students) stated their strong agreement with 
the statement that multimodal digital storytelling book could stimulate the 
students’ enthusiasm and challenge to enhance their writing ability. Next, 40% 
of the students agreed and 10% disagreed. Thus, it could be said that the 
students had a positive perspective toward the statement that multimodal 
digital storytelling book could stimulate the students’ enthusiasm and challenge 
to enhance their writing ability. 
 
Multimodal digital storytelling could motivate to learn writing 

45% of the respondents strongly agreed that multimodal digital 
storytelling book could motivate the students to learn writing. 45% of the 
participants also agreed with it. One student (5%) gave their disagreement 
response to this statement and one students strongly disagreed with it. The 
conclusion was that the students had a positive perspective toward the 
statement that multimodal digital storytelling book could motivate the students 
to learn writing. 
 
Multimodal digital storytelling book could boost the students’ self-
confidence in writing 

40% of the respondents strongly agreed that multimodal digital 
storytelling book could boost the students’ self-confidence in writing. 
Meanwhile, 55% of the participants stated their agreement with the statement 
that the students’ self-confidence in writing class increased because of the use of 
multimodal digital storytelling book. 5% of the respondents or one student only 
disagreed with it. All in all, the students gave their positive perspective toward 
the statement that multimodal digital storytelling book could boost the 
students’ self-confidence in writing. 
 
Multimodal digital storytelling book was effective for learning to write 

55% of the students stated their strong agreement with the statement that 
multimodal digital storytelling book was effective for learning to write. 
Afterwards, 35% students agreed with it. One student (5%) disagreed and one 
student (5%) strongly disagreed with it. In conclusion, there was students’ 
positive perspective that multimodal digital storytelling book was effective for 
learning to write . 

DISCUSSSION  

Based on the findings above, it can be known that more than 85% of the 
students had positive perceptions toward the use of multimodal digital 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
Available online at https://jurnal.iainponorogo.ac.id/index.php/eltall 

 

 

 

 

 
 

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storytelling book as the media in learning writing. The students stated that 
multimodal digital storytelling was a new thing that they learned. By having 
the new knowledge about multimodal digital storytelling, the students were 
expected to be able to implement it in learning writing both individually and 
collaboratively. The students also gave the perception that multimodal digital 
storytelling could create enjoyment for the students in learning writing. This 
feeling of enjoyment could increase the students’ motivation to practice writing 
more and more so that their writing ability got improvement. Besides, it has 
been known that the teaching and learning process should be conducted in the 
joyful environment so the students became more creative and could explore 
their ability more. It is a fact that the students’ feeling interested in learning 
writing could raise their spirit to learn more and more. So the students do not 
feel to be forced when learning writing. Therefore, the students create their own 
passion to learn writing and they become more active in the class of writing. 
Dealing with this, Robin (2016) stated that multimodal digital storytelling could 
make the students become more active to participate in their teaching and 
learning process.  

Most of the students also gave their perception that the use of multimodal 
digital storytelling book in writing class was an interesting thing. According to 
Wahyuni & Yulianti (2016), one of the interesting things in learning a foreign 
language is when the students can express their ideas freely in their writing. 
Besides that, multimodal digital storytelling book that provided the learning 
materials in the forms of combination of written texts, recorded voices, videos, 
and interesting pictures could make the students more interested in learning 
writing.  

Next, most of the students also gave a positive perception that multimodal 
digital storytelling book could stimulate the students’ enthusiasm and challenge 
to enhance their writing ability. The students’ enthusiasm raised because they 
were provided with various forms of materials in the multimodal digital 
storytelling book, such as written texts completed with interesting pictures, 
recorded voices, and embedded videos. Akbarjono et al. (2022) explained that 
students’ enthusiasm could make the students active in the learning process. 

In the case of motivation, the students gave their opinions that multimodal 
digital storytelling book could motivate them to learn writing. Multimodal 
digital storytelling book could attract the students’ attention because of the 
explanations of writing materials were presented in the form of voice recorded 
and then, embedded in the book which was completed with many interesting 
pictures and topics. Ratnaningsih (2019) assumed that interesting pictures could 
raise the students’ motivation. Afterwards, the students became more active to 
participate in the class of writing because of their high motivation. This could 
make their writing ability improved. 

In addition, the students agreed that their self-confidence to write better 
became higher because of the use of multimodal digital storytelling book. The 
students were not afraid anymore to have mistakes because they could read 



ELTALL (English language teaching, applied linguistics 

and Literature) 

Vol. 4 No. 01, 2023  
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and learn the writing materials more and more in the multimodal digital 
storytelling book. They could only listen to the recorded voice when they were 
lazy to read the explanation. They also could open the videos when they felt 
that they had not understood yet. To sum up, they could choose the forms of 
the materials that they wanted. They had many sources for their writing 
materials so their self-confidence became higher. Mardiansyah (2018) argued 
that the higher the students’ self-confidence had, the higher the students’ 
writing ability could get. After they had higher self-confidence in writing, 
automatically they became more brave to express their ideas in their writing 
without feeling of anxiety. 

Finally, most of the students agreed that the use of the multimodal digital 
storytelling was effective for writing class. They felt that their writing ability got 
higher because of the multimodal digital storytelling book. 

 
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION  

Based on the results and discussion, it can be known that the use of 
multimodal digital storytelling book in the online writing class during the 
COVID-19 pandemic got postive perceptions from the students. More than 85% 
students gave their positive perceptions on each questionnaire item related to 
the use of multimodal digital storytelling book in their writing class. To sum up, 
the use of multimodal digital storytelling book in writing class could give the 
new knowledge to the students, make the students enjoy and feel interested in 
learning writing, challenge the students’ writing ability, stimulate and motivate 
them to learn writing, and improve their confidence in learning writing. Thus, it 
can be said that multimodal digital storytelling book is appropriate to be used 
in the online writing class. Therefore, hopefully this study results can become 
the consideration for the English teachers to use multimodal digital storytelling 
book when they teach online writing. Because this present study was limited to 
investigate the students’ perceptions of the use multimodal digital storytelling 
book in the writing class, it is suggested for the future researchers to conduct 
the research in the same areas but in the different parts, such as the 
implementation of the multimodal digital storytelling book in speaking, 
listening, and reading classess as well as the investigation of the students’ and 
the teachers’ perceptions on the use of that multimodal digital storytelling book. 

 
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	Mukminatus Zuhriyah
	Universitas Hasyim Asy’ari Tebuireng Jombang. Indonesia
	Abstract
	INTRODUCTION
	METHODS
	FINDINGS
	DISCUSSSION
	CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

