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THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA WHATSAPP AMONG ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDENTS FOR SOLVING THESIS WRITING PROBLEMS

Purpose of the study: This study aimed to analyze the use of social media, WhatsApp, among the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education Program undergraduate students for solving their thesis writing problems, focusing on the effects of the WhatsApp use and to inquire whether WhatsApp communication helps them solve their thesis writing problems. Methodology: The design of this study is descriptive qualitative in nature. The researchers selected 30 English Language Education Program undergraduate students comprising 9 male and 21 female students who were writing theses as participants. This study used the semi-structured interview to collect detailed information needed for this research. The researchers used note-taking and recording device using Galaxy Note 8. Main Findings: Findings revealed that the use of social media, WhatsApp, among the undergraduate students of the UIN Ar-Raniry' English Language Education Program, shows a positive impact on solving the problems they face regarding their thesis writing. The findings also indicated that the use of social media, WhatsApp, has put students at ease in solving their various problems regarding thesis writing constraints. Application of the study: This study can be very useful for the students writing theses, and thesis supervisors. The findings of this research give insights and provide information and theories related to thesis writing issues. Studies on this issue lack in the field of education in general and thesis related problem sharing and supervisee-supervisor relationships in particular. Novelty/Originality of the study: The findings justify how the use of WhatsApp brings about positive effects and partly solve students' thesis writing problems. The findings revealed that these research benefits readers enhance existing knowledge and contributes to the construction of new knowledge in the field of education. Therefore, researchers recommend further research on the effects and benefits or other aspects of social media usage.


INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this research was to investigate the use of social media, WhatsApp, among the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education undergraduate students for solving their thesis writing problems. In Indonesia for the undergraduate student level, it is called skripsi instead of a thesis. Skripsi is a term used to describe a scientific and research paper written by undergraduate students as a compulsory requirement to complete their studies at higher education (Poerwadarminta, 2002). Therefore, the term skripsi is later on used in this paper. Social media is "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media are equipped with the capacity and the facility to discuss, create a forum for discussion, modify and share information in texts, images, videos and audios for the users (Singh & Dwiyendi, 2013). Among the commonly used social media are WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Most of UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education Program undergraduate students have problems finishing their skripsi. The problems are derived from many sources such as lack of supervisors' time, difficulty to meet them or lack of knowledge sharing among those who are writing skripsi. They need effective device or media, which could help them communicate both with their supervisors and their peers. This investigation is to analyze the use of social media, WhatsApp, for solving skripsi writing problems.
The first research question is that "what are the perceived effects of social media, WhatsApp, used by students who are writing skripsi?" This research question aimed to find out the answers of the social media effects, WhatsApp, has on the easiness of the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry' English language Education Program undergraduate students who are at the writing skripsi stage. The research focused on the positive effects of the WhatsApp on writing theses. The reasons why they prefer to use WhatsApp to other devices and the advantages of WhatsApp application for solving students' skripsi writing problems and in what ways were inquired in this research.
Due to the practicality of WhatsApp usage for communication purposes, more and more students use WhatsApp for communication means including for solving skripsi writing problems. The study conducted by Fathy and Fattah (2015) showed that WhatsApp technology could enhance students' active participation in the EFL classroom. The effectiveness of using WhatsApp messenger as one of the mobile learning tools is perceived to have helped students develop their writing skills. A study conducted by Sukrillah et al. (2017) on the use of WhatsApp in the Faculty of Islamic Economics of Juanda Bogor, Indonesia, indicated that the use of WhatsApp is very widespread. It serves as a medium for disseminating information and as a facility for discussion and education. In a higher education setting, when it comes to reaching out and engaging with students, the use of social media can be extremely useful. It improves the professorstudent relationship. A bulk of research shows that students-teachers use WhatsApp to communicate for academic purposes. The research also revealed that due to its user-friendly, WhatsApp is becoming the most effective social media tool for teachers to communicate with students (Kheryadi, 2017). Quality communication between teachers and students is of the essence. Students should be able to access teachers both in and outside the school building. It is very important to have indirect and technology-based communication at schools. Communication channels should be easy, attractive, and flexible, and using social media is essential. Junco et al. (2010) based on their investigation, stated that the use of social media, particularly WhatsApp has caused the communication between students and faculty to improve, provided an avenue for communication and promoted cooperation among students. Consequently, WhatsApp usage on campus has been proven useful.

METHODOLOGY
The objectives of this research are to investigate the effects of social media used by the students writing skripsi, and to see if social media communications help them solve skripsi writing problem. This study is an in-depth inquiry using qualitative research. As the nature of the research is exploring perceived impacts on the use of social media, such as the WhatsApp towards students' ability to solve their problems in writing the skripsi, it requires a methodology that requires in-depth exploration of the phenomenon through semi-structured in-depth interviews, and qualitative research is applicable for this purpose. The participants of the research were recruited using the Purposive Sampling technique since it requires researchers to identify those who meet the criteria of the inquiry. This technique of sampling is known as a non-probability form in which the researcher relies on his or her sound judgment in obtaining the representative sample (Sugiono, 2016). The participants of this research were the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education Program undergraduate students who were writing skripsi. The data were collected through a semistructured in-depth interview technique. The population of this study is those who were at the thesis writing stage, 150 students, out of 291 English Education Program undergraduate students entered UIN Ar-Raniry in the year of 2014. However, not all students writing skripsi were around when the investigation was carried out. Nor were all of the active students. Therefore, the researcher relies on his intelligent judgment in selecting the representative sample. There were 30 students considered appropriate as research participants, consisting of 9 male and 21 female students. The number is considered gender representative since there are about 30% male and 70% female students of the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education Program. The interview process was recorded by using the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The interview took place in an interactional way referring to ( Steward & Cash, 2014). The researchers recorded the interview process and transcribed it into a transcript for data analysis (Creswell, 2008). The data were presented mostly in verbatim. The table displays the students' entrance trends from 2010 to 2019. Even though the number of entering students drops in 2019 to 180 students, the entering number of the current academic years is above 200 students indicating trends of entrance stability. Apart from that of the Academic Year of 2011, the number of students entering the UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Ar-Raniry's English Language Education Program is steadily increasing in earlier years peaking in the academic year of 2014, 291 students, from which the participants of this research were involved. It is also interesting to see that the number of female students is much higher than that of male students for all academic years from 2010 to 2019.

RESULTS
The objectives of this research are to investigate the perceived effectiveness of social media used by the students writing skripsi, and to see if social media communication helps them solve problems in their skripsi writing. The data were collected mainly by in-depth semi-structured interviews. The interview was tailored to the research questions.
Our first inquiry in this study is the effect of social media used by EFL undergraduate students of UIN Ar-Raniry, who are writing skripsi?" Here are excerpts of the responses related to our first research inquiry.
Student A: "I use W.A. to contact my supervisor, and it connects the user's phone number, so it is a simple App." Respondents use WhatsApp is due to its simplicity and practicality.
Student D: "Using the WhatsApp platform is very cheap. It is much cheaper than using a phone call." Respondents use WhatsApp because it is cheap. It is cheaper than making a phone call or SMS.
Student Z: "I prefer WhatsApp than other communication facilities because I don't have to reload phone credit." In addition to practicality, this statement also means that using WhatsApp is cheaper for them. As students, they can afford it.
Student E: "Using WhatsApp, you can also send pictures, video, or audio quickly. WhatsApp group is very useful for me. It is very quick and easy to use, very user-friendly. My supervisor also responds quickly by W.A." It is quick and user friendly.
Student T: "One of the benefits of WhatsApp is we can make W.A. group and discuss things online." Having WhatsApp forum students can discuss skripsi writing matters without gathering themselves physically.  Here respondents share information using WhatsApp.
Student B: "We have WhatsApp and we make a group discussion on our skripsi examination among us who are at writing skripsi stage. When we have a problem, we type our problems on the forum. All members can get benefit from it. By discussion, we solve our problems." Respondents informed that they have online forums via WhatsApp and they help each other on skripsi munaqasyah, oral examination.
Student P: "WhatsApp is very very helpful for me because it not only facilitates online social meeting in the forum but also help me access up-to-date information from my peers."

Easiness and Quickness of Communication
Most of the students' responses reveal the positive effects of social media usage. Most of them consider that WhatsApp allows them to engage in efficient and effective communication with their supervisors and friends. The finding is in congruence with previous research findings (Chuttur, 2009 (2017) found that social media has opened up modern opportunities for interaction and collaboration among students and between students and teachers. This finding is relevant to the conclusion drawn by Rovai (2002) that using WhatsApp students cooperate and collaborate in the university setting. Some students acknowledged that using WhatsApp is affordable. This argument is relevant to the findings found by Church & de Oliveira (2013) that the reasons for WhatsApp usage include reliability, immediacy, sense of connection and community, social influences, technical characteristics, and low cost. Using WhatsApp is even much cheaper than making a phone call and SMS. This result of the study is also consistent with the previous study that WhatsApp gradually replaces the function of SMS (Jisha & Jebakumar, 2014).

Making Appointment
One of the main points of the responses indicates that WhatsApp is one of the most frequently used facilities for nonacademic justification, making an appointment, particularly with supervisors. This result is in agreement with what stated by BouhnikandDeshen (2014) as a finding of their qualitative study that teachers communicate with students using WhatsApp. As all lecturers are engaged in other jobs in addition to supervising students writing skripsi, students are told to make an appointment in advance before consulting him or her. It is a very practical and simple application for students writing skripsi to search for a supervisor's availability and his or her spare time. The students make an appointment in a very easy and quick way. The finding is in an alignment with what Malecela (2016) found based on the study of the perception of a university student in Malaysia that WhatsApp was useful for students' learning, educational communication and collaboration and the students believed that WhatsApp was very beneficial for communication with each other and the professor. These findings are also in line with the current theory stated by Baker and Oswald (2010) that social media use makes quality relationships. It is easy to communicate before having face-to-face discussions. Users feel more comfortable and more time for effective communication. The finding also indicates that the respondents of this study are satisfied with WhatsApp usage due to its capacity that allows them to share, upload files, and videos.

Problem Sharing
The other main benefit of social media use, as found in this study, is that it is a tool to share students' problems in completing their skripsi. Many students use social media, particularly WhatsApp, to share their challenges and difficulties in completing their skripsi with their friends and supervisors. Although it is also obvious that they do not always share all challenges and difficulties with their supervisors for various reasons, they keep communicating with their colleagues regarding the complexities of skripsi writing. This response is in alignment with what Lerman (2007) found that among the advantages of social media usage is that the user can share interests and get feedback from each other. It revealed that the participants of this study share and solve their skripsi problems using WhatsApp with friends and supervisors. The students communicate dan discuss matters pertaining to their skripsi writing in real-time as WhatsApp application allows them to discuss and share in the synchronous way in which students contribute and provide feedback at the same time. With WhatsApp facility, the students can also share one another in an asynchronous manner in which they can provide feedback at any time and at their own pace. Among important issues shared are about writing skripsi with acceptable grammatical structure, relevant sources, valid referencing styles, methodology, and other issues in line with the skripsi writing.
Apart from information closely related to our research inquiries, the researchers also uncovered an important fact that students at the skripsi writing stage suffer from psychological problems, such as having low motivation, unwillingness to engage in learning or laziness to complete their skripsi. They also have socio-cultural problems such as difficulties of