Exploring Students’ Voices on Digital Platforms during COVID-19 Pandemic

The use of digital platforms has increased significantly during COVID-19 pandemic. However, research on students’ voices during this crisis is still very limited and needs to be further explored. This present study aims to explore PBI students’ voices on the use of digital platforms during COVID-19, and their evaluation towards the digital platforms. The concurrent triangulation strategy of mixed-method design was utilized in this study. In this approach, qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with five students, while quantitative data was collected through a closed-ended questionnaire administered to 50 students of English department students batch 2017. The findings of this study showed that students have a positive agreement toward the use of digital platforms during COVID-19 pandemic. The researcher found that among the three applications recommended by the Department, the most dominant digital platform used by PBI’s students during COVID-19 pandemic is Google Classroom, followed by Google Meet, and Canvas. These three digital applications provide free, practical, and functional features to support the online learning process, each application also received a high level of satisfaction in the CALL evaluation. Some drawbacks during the use of digital applications include difficulties in operating applications, losing the internet connection, and running out of internet quota.