An Analysis of Students’ Barriers to Online Learning Using WhatsApp During the Pandemic of Covid-19

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify what are the major barriers that students mostly faced when they use WhatsApp as a platform to attend an online learning process. The subject of this study was 52 undergraduate students from the English Education Department of Halu Oleo University who enrolled in the academic year 2020/2021. This research used a descriptive research design. The data of this research were collected through the questionnaire of students' barriers to online learning that was adapted from Muilenburg and Berge (2005) and also an interview. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics to find out what is the major barrier that most students faced when they used WhatsApp as a platform to attend an online learning class. The result shows that the majority of students in the sixth semester of the English Education Department of Halu Oleo University students feel impacted by five out of eight-factor barriers that showed in an online learning process using WhatsApp. Among the five factors barriers that students feel impacted, learner motivation has the higher positive responses which indicate that learner motivation becomes the major factor barrier that most students faced when online learning using WhatsApp is implemented. Overall positive responses to learner motivation factor barriers are 90.4%. Meanwhile, the negative responses were only 9.6%.