Integrating Digital Storytelling through Online Learning to Reduce Students’ Speaking Anxiety

Abstract

Online learning has been widely used in delivering materials to students. Likewise, many private institutions in Indonesia also implement online learning. They utilize online learning platforms such as Zoom Meeting, Google Meet, and Google Classroom to support the process of teaching and learning. However, during online speaking classes, students’ anxiety poses as one of the biggest problems that obstruct students in improving their skills. Digital storytelling can be considered as one of the media to improve students’ speaking skills. This research aims to investigate the implementation of digital storytelling through online learning to reduce students’ speaking anxiety in an Indonesian private institution and to find out students’ perspectives on the benefits and challenges in regard to its implementation. A single qualitative case study was carried out involving one student in a private institution. The data were collected through three main instruments: classroom observation, interview with the student, and a questionnaire. The collected data from the questionnaire were analyzed based on six sources of anxiety proposed by Saglamel and Kayaoglu (2013) and the questionnaire was adopted from Horwitz et al. (1986) to measure student’s speaking anxiety. From the results of observation, interview, and questionnaire, it can be concluded that implementing Digital storytelling in an online learning can reduce the student’s level of speaking anxiety.