1635 Copyright © 2022 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) Volume 10, Number 1, December 2022 pp. 1635 – 1642 Perception of Digital Storytelling in Overcoming Fear for Speaking English through Interdisciplinary Project of Gender Issues Puspita Dewi1, Dian Eka Sari*2 *cici@stba-prayoga.ac.id 1 English Literature Department, Universitas Bumigora, Mataram, Indonesia 2*English Literature Department, STBA Prayoga Padang, Padang, Indonesia Received: 2022-06-02 Accepted: 2022-12-31 DOI: 10.24256/ideas.v10i2.2748 Abstract Learning speaking has many challenging, particularly for students who have obstacles speaking in public places. This study reports on a project designed by the students to evaluate the development of their speaking skill through the digital storytelling with mobile devices. This study explores the perception of the learners on the digital storytelling in learning speaking and how the digital storytelling effects on students’ speaking. This research involved English students for Department of English Literature in the second semester who took speaking subject. A qualitative research was used in this study adapted a workshop approach and RASE (Resources, Activity, Support, and Evaluation) with three phases pre-production, production, and post-production and supported by a quantitative data by filling a questionnaire. The research results show that digital storytelling has positive impact to students because they believe that it encouraged them to learn writing, grammar, pronunciation, writing, and reading with the highest percentage of the students’ response is 55.6%. The learners also agree that the project can support them to be more confident and familiar with social phenomena involving women issues. This research is expected to contribute to the teaching and learning second or foreign language. Keywords: digital storytelling; English; perception, Puspita Dewi, Dian Eka Sari Perception of Digital Storytelling in Overcoming Fear for Speaking English through Interdisciplinary Project of Gender Issues 1636 Introduction The development of technology has becoming fresh sides for learners and educators to gain more information and knowledge through internet and other online resources. Moreover, nowadays the millennial generation has different attitude in learning from baby boomer or previous generations. The millennial tend to use mobile phone in most of their time such as watching YouTube, scrolling social media, playing games, creating videos, and using other applications. Moreover, Churchill (2020) mentions that technology or mobile devices becoming increasingly omnipresent in this era and has a pivotal role today both for individual or professional lives. Consequently, it can be good approach for teachers to utilize the technology in teaching and learning process. Technology becomes one of the most effective tools to motivate and empower the students in learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) because it is not only provide students with better access to a wide variety of language resources but also encourage them to learn (Motteram (2013), cited in Eisenlauer, 2020). Students can search plenty information, images, videos or other materials to be learnt. Numerous young people learn English or other foreign languages from YouTube, Tiktok or other application such as Elsa, Duolingo, Hello English and others. The reason is the Millenial or Gen-Z like more visual than audio. As a result, the current learners prefer learning from internet to listening from lecturing so that they tend to gain information or learn from YouTube. Audio-visual has important role in helping the students’ comprehensibility because they can be assisted with the pictures, audios, texts, or other assistances. It is also because the learners could engage their daily life experiences with the cultural histories (Hirsch & Macleroy, 2020). The combination visual and auditory stimuli such as pictures and words may provide theoretical to be more realistic to enhance students’ skills and captioned video have close relationship to English comprehension that lead to increase learners’ understanding of word-based knowledge (Teng, 2019). In speaking, the speakers need to have and master plenty of vocabularies to be put in the communication and audio visual can assist them to remind the vocabularies. The learners create their own narration and based on their certain experiences because digital storytelling refers to the process of developing personal narratives based on certain life experiences combined by pictures, audios, texts and the others from two to five minutes (Austen et al., 2021). Through the digital storytelling allows young people, particularly learners to visualize and tell their daily live or to criticize the regulation of economics, politics, education and other sectors (Marshall et al., 2021). It is prominently used for almost all sectors such as for both academic and community-oriented environments (Shiri et al., 2021). This interesting teaching tool is potentially to be able to be promoted in various skills (Del-Moral-Pe rez et al., 2019) including learning English. For example, a research has been conducted for adolescent Taiwanese EFL learners that shows that DST can contribute to greater improvement in learning English for young learners, especially in English speaking and creative thinking (Yang et al., 2020). This skill is challenging because the students need to master not only the materials but also the confidence to speak, particularly speaking in public. IDEAS, Vol.10, No.1,December2022 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1637 Using digital storytelling expected can encourage the learners to speak English. Information and Technology are very helpful for learners to learn second or foreign language. Based on a research result of Wang et al. (2019) showed that using ICT (YouTube) can create good vibes for the learners; the learning process can be more interactive and assist the learners to improve their English skills. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage the students to create videos with digital storytelling through relevant applications. Method This research is a mixed research. The quantitative data are gained from student’s responses that fill the questionnaire provided, while the qualitative data gained from the interview. The project used a workshop approach and RASE modified from (Churchill, 2020 and Hirsch & Macleroy, 2020). The individual project was instructed to the students to create a draft in of the topic imbedded in the digital storytelling. The students drafted their scenario and discussed with the tutors and friends. The workshop approach used three phases (pre-production, production, and post production) combined with RASE (Resources, Activity, Support, and Evaluation). Those approaches were modified in this research by three phases: pre- production with drafting the scenario (creative writing) by selecting the content with imbedded the values; production with creating the video by combining the audios, the pictures, and relevant videos; and post-production with evaluating the videos with providing some feedbacks and the learners revise their videos based on the suggestions. The sample of this research is the university students of English department in speaking class. The topic of the story in this project is women issues. They drafted their scenario and select the best topic that becomes their story incorporated with women phenomenon. Afterwards, the students create their story based on the phenomenon and providing the values. This study was collected through discussion and interview with the learners at various points in the process in creating the digital storytelling. Both tutor and other learners provide some notes for feedbacks. The tutors asked the students to revise their projects based on the feedbacks. Results The response of the English department students for the using of digital storytelling in learning speaking are shown in tables 1, 2, and 3. The questionnaire used 4 Likert scale, namely Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Fairly Agree (FA), and Disagree (DA). The questionnaire was filled by the students via Google form. The learners also were interviewed to gain information of their perception related to the research topic. Students’ perception about digital storytelling with other skills such as learn pronunciation, grammar, writing reading, writing, and vocabularies are illustrated in Table 1. Table 1. Digital storytelling and other skills Puspita Dewi, Dian Eka Sari Perception of Digital Storytelling in Overcoming Fear for Speaking English through Interdisciplinary Project of Gender Issues 1638 NO STATEMENTS SA A FA DA 1 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to learn pronunciation. 61.1% 33.3% 5.6% 0% 2 Digital Storytelling can help me to learn grammar. 33.3% 55.6% 11.1% 0% 3 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to learn reading. 38.9% 50% 11.1% 0% 4 Digital Storytelling can assist me to learn writing. 33.3% 50% 11.1% 5.6% 5 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to learn new vocabularies. 61.1% 33.3% 5.6% 0% In terms of Table 1, the data depict that more than fifty per cent of the respondents strongly agree where digital storytelling can support them to learn pronunciation and one third of them agree with the statement. Related to learning grammar, half of the students agree that digital storytelling encourages them to learn grammar and almost 40% strongly agree. It is the same proportion with digital storytelling supports them to learn writing. More than half per cent also state that by using digital storytelling, they can be encouraged learning new vocabularies. It is also relevant to the interview results note that “digital storytelling makes me have new vocabularies”. The perception of the influence of digital storytelling and speaking ability can be illustrated in Table 2. Table 2. Digital storytelling and speaking ability NO STATEMENTS SA A FA DA 1 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to speak English. 44.4% 50% 5.6% 0% 2 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to speak English fluently. 44.4% 55.6% 0% 0% 3 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to be more confident in Speaking English. 38.9% 44.4% 16.7% 0% 4 Digital Storytelling can minimalize my nervous in speaking English. 27.8% 50% 11.1% 11.1% IDEAS, Vol.10, No.1,December2022 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1639 The data reveal that digital story telling can encourage the learners to speak English and even to speak English fluently with the same percentage (44.4%) and they agree with the statements, 50% and 55.6% respectively. Almost half per cent of them also agree that digital storytelling can encourage them to be more confident and reduce their feeling nervous in speaking English. Digital storytelling also elicits and encourages the learners to be more critical thinking and understand of social issues including women topics. It was depicted in Table 3. Table 3. Digital storytelling and critical thinking NO STATEMENTS SA A FA DA 1 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to think critically. 38.9% 44.4% 16.7% 0% 2 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to understand social issues. 33.3% 55.6% 11.1% 0% 3 Digital Storytelling can encourage me to understand women issues. 33.3% 61.1% 5.6% 0% Table 3 illustrates that more than one third of the respondents strongly agree and almost 45% agree but only few of them select fairly agree. While, more than half of the respondents agree that digital storytelling can encourage them to understand social issue including women issues, 55.6% and 61.1% respectively. Discussion The first phase, the tutor guided the students how to create the digital storytelling. They drafted their story aligned with women issues such as sexual violence, women empowerment, intimidation, and other women problems. The learners browsed and searched the materials based on their wants and needs. They wrote the narration depended on their topics. Selecting relevant pictures and videos that support their narration is another step. The students begin producing their videos based on their script planned and install an application such as cap cut, vivo video, canvas, and other applications. The learners open the application and create their digital storytelling by combining the narration by recording their voice with the pictures and videos is to accomplishing the project. The learners present their project among the classmates and their friends comment and provide feedbacks on their videos; therefore they can revise their project. In the post production, the projects were presented in the classroom based on workshop approach because the videos need to be revised. On average, the students do not explain the values of the story and the story sometimes did not match with the picture selected. The project was revised based on feedbacks and Puspita Dewi, Dian Eka Sari Perception of Digital Storytelling in Overcoming Fear for Speaking English through Interdisciplinary Project of Gender Issues 1640 suggestions from tutors and their peers. The videos then uploaded on YouTube and share the link to public to encourage them and to elicit those speaking English in public. Digital Storytelling is one of the effective ways in learning second foreign language or English because the students not only learn about grammar but also about pronunciation and vocabularies. The students state that the project is one of the best ways to increase their vocabularies and gain new words because they have to learn other materials and videos. Many of new vocabularies are gained from the project because they read some texts, search other resources and write the draft to minimize mistakes. Fu et al. (2021) state that DST projects have positive impact on speaking skill of the pupils. The students really enjoy create the DST because the project is not only sharpen their abilities in speaking but to boost their confidence in speak English. The data are relevant to research results from Sunderland et al. (2020) note that digital storytelling have positive vibes for most of the students that they rapidly gained confidence. The student mentions that: For me personally it is effective but like since every student is different, different learning method. I think digital storytelling is very enjoyable if the topics are the one students love. Because that makes the students explore more about the topic. Overall, Digital storytelling is effective because it trains us to do some research and we also learn how actually to utilize technology in our learning process because we have to edit video and use audios. it takes a lot of effort but it fun if we really enjoy it. Talking about research also like confident and to get more vocabulary we can get. It makes me actually can know a lot of new words that we never heard before. Writing the script is one of the most crucial components in digital storytelling because the goal of creating DST is to tell stories of social phenomena to public (Tanrıkulu, 2020). The data interview also illustrates that through digital storytelling, the students not only learn of pronunciation and vocabularies but also learning writing. For me personally yes, because I have to write the script and when I write the script, I need to like, aaa you know analyse the grammar and the structure of the texts because it heavy topic so I have to revise a lot of times. so that one actually is very related to writing that one took me long time to this project because I need to revise a lot of things. This project leads the students be more creative and sharpen their critical thinking because technology can bring people to learn many aspects including in learning English. Conlon et al. (2020, p.4) state that “good teaching includes technology; its effective use requires digital competence alongside an awareness of the potential effect of each component part of the learning”. Through the digital storytelling, the students can learn other skills that lead to their confidence in IDEAS, Vol.10, No.1,December2022 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) 1641 speaking. It is because they can gained new vocabularies, pronunciation, and grammar that can encourage them to be more confident to speak. Consequently, this project has positive impact to the students. Acknowledgement I would like to thank you to the rector, the dean, and the lecturers of Bumigora University. References Austen, L., Pickering, N., & Judge, M. (2021). Student reflections on the pedagogy of transitions into higher education, through digital storytelling. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(3), 337–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2020.1762171 Churchill, N. (2020). Development of students’ digital literacy skills through digital storytelling with mobile devices. Educational Media International, 57(3), 271– 284. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2020.1833680 Conlon, M. M. M., Smart, F., Mcintosh, G., & Smart, F. (2020). Does technology flatten authenticity ? 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