<p><em>The utilization of digital comics in this pandemic situation may become a valuable solution. In fact, many challenges and obstacles faced by students regarding the implementation of online learning. This research aimed at investigating the utilization of digital comics in college students’ online grammar class as well as students’ responses. The research design was practical action research which followed Mills’ model (Creswell, 2012). The participants were 36 nursing college students of a university in Lamongan. The instruments used were observation notes, questionnaire, and student-made comics (artifacts). Then, the data from observation notes and student-made comics were analyzed by Miles, Huberman, &amp; Saldana’s (2014) framework for qualitative data analysis while the data from questionnaire were analyzed by using coding to draw conclusion. The results of the study indicated that (1) there are 4 (four) major steps in utilizing digital comics in grammar learning and (2) students showed positive responses to the utilization of digital comics in learning English grammar indicated by the results of questionnaire. It is expected that educators can take advantage of digital applications such as digital comic makers to deal with online classroom.</em></p>

The COVID-19 pandemic has made online learning as a common instructional delivery today. Since various methods, approaches, and technologies are involved, it is important to understand students’ perceptions for taking further decision in teaching. The current research aimed to investigate Indonesian students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning along with the challenges in the level of higher education. Bichronous online learning refers to the blending between asynchronous and synchronous online learning. In this study, asynchronous learning was carried out through Edmodo while the synchronous mode was implemented via Zoom. The participants were 57 first-year university students who experienced full bichronous online learning in the English for Specific Purposes class. This research applied explanatory sequential mixed-methods as suggested by Creswell (2014). The quantitative data were obtained by Likert-scale questionnaires while the qualitative data were acquired through interviews and observations. The results indicated that students had positive perceptions of bichronous online learning in terms of motivations, academic achievement, and communication and interactions. Bichronous online learning promoted students’ engagement, active interaction, and feedback exchange which highly contributed to their learning outcome. However, technical issues such as poor internet connection and limited data plan were the biggest challenges faced by the students. It is expected that educators can adjust which online learning tools are convenient to use and cater to students’ needs.

This current study is aimed to know whether any improvement or not in using digital comics as the media on student’s English competence. The researchers used a quantitative approach with a pre-experimental design. This research was conducted at Universitas Muhammadiyah Lamongan and the sample was 42 pharmacist medical students. The instrument that was used to measure students’ English competence was the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The result of the test was analyzed by using statistical analysis of paired sample t-test. The finding showed that there was significant improvement before and after the treatment, it can be proved by the significant value of the pre and post-test which was 0.000 (2 tailed). Since the significance value (2-tailed) was less than 0.05, it means that the hypotheses of this study were accepted. In other words, the students positively received the use of digital comics for English learning activities. Therefore, digital comics can be assumed as an effective media or tool for enhancing students’ English competence.

In learning English as a foreign language, language learning strategies (LLS) is undoubtedly important. Therefore, most of language learners need to employ LLS in learning language effectively. However, LLS have a uniqueness that is each learner may employ LLS differently and it usually depends on some factors. The factors which usually affect LLS preferences among others are motivation, socioeconomic status, parental support, age, gender, etc. This current study tries to explore this phenomenon by administering Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) to 118 participants, consisted of 66 junior high school students and 52 senior high school students in Paciran, East Java. It is used for measuring the strategies that is used by the language learners in learning English.  Interview is also administered as the supporting data to gain the missing information which cannot be obtained from the SILL. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between male and female students in LLS preferences whereas there was a statistically significant difference between younger and older learners in employing LLS; the young learners tended to use LLS more frequent than the older. Therefore, it can be strongly assumed that the age factor is more important than the gender factor in terms of the LLS preferences. Since, this current study showed that both male and female language learners tend to employ LLS in the same frequency level.