Exploring EFL Students’ Perceptions and Practices towards the Use of Interactive Multimedia Tools to Enhance Digital Literacy Skills

Abstract

In the modern educational landscape, integrating interactive multimedia tools into the learning and teaching process has become a key strategy to improve students’ competencies in navigating, evaluating, and creating digital content. The primary objective of this study is to explore students’ attitudes towards the effectiveness of these tools in improving digital literacy skills, including information literacy, media literacy, digital communication, and digital problem-solving. This exploratory research used a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative research tools in order to gather relevant data about the most commonly used interactive multimedia tools by EFL students, as well as their perceptions towards the role of these tools in shaping the 21st-century learners’ competencies. On the one hand, a questionnaire was administered via Google Forms in order to gather data from fifty third-year EFL students at 8 May 1945 Guelma University. On the other hand, an online focus group discussion via messenger was administered with seven participants from the same population. The findings showed that the majority of learners shared positive perceptions about the use of interactive multimedia tools and perceived them as effective in improving their digital literacy skills. However, students claimed that the use of interactive multimedia tools exhibit serious limitations such as the lack of technological resources, digital competencies, and distraction and time consumption. Therefore, practical recommendations were proposed to ensure the effective integration of these tools in the teaching and learning process.