UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF PADLET FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

As a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many language instructors have been using Padlet to teach their students. Padlet is a digital notice board that is accessible online with features that enable its users to post texts, images, links, audios, videos, documents and comments on a shared “wall” which can be made available to the public or set as private. Looking at the frequent usage of Padlet by language instructors, it is of importance to understand the usage of the digital tool from the perspective of the students. Thus, this study aims to present the perceptions of a group of twenty-three third-year undergraduate Industrial Design students from a Malaysian public university on the use of Padlet for English language learning. First, students had to complete two English language learning tasks using Padlet namely getting to know each other and preparation for oral presentation. The tasks were administered in classes in two separate weeks. After that, students were asked to provide written feedbacks on their perception toward the use of Padlet to complete the two tasks. Twenty-three written feedbacks for each task were received from the students involved. Next, a thematic analysis was done by coding the keywords from the written feedbacks to derive common themes. Three themes emerged from the analysis namely usefulness, experience, and usability. The themes were divided into two categories namely positive and negative. It was found that all the students’ perceptions on the use of Padlet in completing the first English language learning task were positive in terms of their experience using it as well as its usefulness and ease of use. However, for the second English language learning task, four students raised concerns on the usability of Padlet to complete the task. They perceived it to be difficult, impractical, and unsuitable for lengthy writing and requires extra care when writing to avoid mistakes. The rest of the students had positive views on the use of Padlet for completing the second task. Overall, the students’ perceptions towards Padlet seem to be encouraging in terms of its usefulness, experience, and usability for English language learning. Thus, the findings of this study can be used as reference in utilising digital tools for teaching and learning language. Additionally, the findings could be referred to accelerate the process to introduce information and communications technology (ICT) in education as outlined in the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework