A bridge or a barrier? Navigating students' engagement with interactive learning platforms under the EMI context: A phenomenological study of a Sino-British cooperative university in China

While interactive learning platforms (ILPs) are widely deployed to drive student participation in higher education, their specific pedagogical impact within transnational English Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms remains poorly understood. This is particularly the case in Sino-foreign cooperative universities in China, where Western teaching approaches are blended with Asian learning traditions. Adopting a phenomenological approach, we investigate how Chinese postgraduate students perceive and experience the use of ILPs in this distinctive EMI context. Data from semi-structured interviews with 13 postgraduate students at a Sino-British cooperative university were analysed by template analysis. Our findings reveal a paradox in students' lived experiences: ILPs function simultaneously as empowering pedagogical bridges and inhibiting cognitive barriers. While platform anonymity successfully bypassed cultural face-saving concerns to democratise behavioural participation, these benefits were heavily counterweighted by the dual processing burden inherent in EMI. Specifically, when navigating the rapid interactional demands of ILPs, learners experienced severe cognitive fragmentation and acute technostress, often feeling compelled to sacrifice deep conceptual processing for superficial response speed. Theoretically, this study underscores the necessity of contextualising engagement frameworks to account for the linguistic realities of EMI, while practically contributing a nuanced understanding of technology-mediated engagement and offering actionable implications for designing culturally and linguistically responsive EMI pedagogies.