The Students' Engagement in Learning English Through Digital Media Synchronised with Merdeka Curriculum. (A Qualitative Study of the Eighth Grade Students at SMP N 07 Rejang Lebong in academic year 2025/2026)

Mareta, Rara and Hidayah, Jumatul and Fauziah, Meli (2026) The Students' Engagement in Learning English Through Digital Media Synchronised with Merdeka Curriculum. (A Qualitative Study of the Eighth Grade Students at SMP N 07 Rejang Lebong in academic year 2025/2026). Sarjana thesis, Institut Agama Islam Negeri Curup.

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Abstract

This study aims to describe the types of digital media used in English learning, to explore eighth-grade students' experiences of academic, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement when using digital media, and to describe how this engagement is contextualised within the implementation of the Merdeka Curriculum at SMPN 7 Rejang Lebong. This study employs a qualitative case study design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with ten students and one English teacher. The findings show that the most frequently used digital media are instructional videos, PPT/presentations, and interactive online quizzes. Students reported academic, behavioral, and emotional engagement at near-unanimous positive levels, while cognitive engagement showed greater variability in the data. Behavioral engagement was found to be an actively self-regulated process against digital distraction, independently corroborated by the teacher. The study also found that students' preference for face-to-face interaction remained strong despite high digital media engagement, and that the teacher's account revealed passive students not represented in the largely positive student interview sample. Digital media was found to align with Merdeka Curriculum principles of guided student autonomy and project-based learning (P5). This study concludes that digital media contributes positively to students' multidimensional engagement in English learning, though these findings are limited by the absence of classroom observation data and the small teacher sample (one of the 2–3 targeted). This study recommends that teachers maintain clear digital media usage rules, design content-creation-based tasks, and provide individualised support for less-engaged students.

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Thesis (Sarjana)

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