Online Media Usage in Guidance and Counseling Services during Covid-19 Pandemic

: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought restraints into people’s activities. Consequently, during the pandemic, the school guidance and counseling services should be conducted online. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the types of online media frequently used by school counselors in classical guidance and individual or group counseling, as well as the rationale. This descriptive quantitative study involved 106 school counselors and used an Online Media Usage questionnaire to obtain the data. The results suggest that Google Form and Google Classroom have become the most used applications in classical guidance, while WhatsApp is the most popular application for individual or group counseling. These applications are selected due to the limited internet access, students’ technological literacy, students’ financial state, and privacy assurance, primarily for the counseling process. Therefore, the school counselors mainly provide asynchronous rather than synchronous services during the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, these results can be the foundation for online guidance and counseling services development.


INTRODUCTION
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, countries have implemented several new protocols, such as work from home, study from home, social distancing, and physical distancing (Boshra et al., 2020;Chu et al., 2020;Koh, Naing, & Wong, 2020;Liebrenz, Bhugra, Buadze, & Schleifer, 2020;Qureshi, Suri, Chu, Suri, & Suri, 2021;Sammer, Sher, Huisman, & Seghers, 2020;Savić, 2020).Similarly, in Indonesia, all learning activities are carried out from home since the government enforced the work from home and stayed at home regulation.Consequently, teachers have to teach from home, while the students also learn from home, using online media and schedules arranged by the schools.Thus, the guidance and counseling services are also carried out online.
However, implementation of online counseling still carries several complexities since its differences with offline counseling that demands particular competence.Substantially, school counselors use applications, such as WhatsApp, Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, Hangout, Telegram, and Instagram as the media for the counseling process (Musdalifah, 2020;Sholihah & Handayani, 2020;Supriyanto et al., 2020).In addition to the counseling services, school counselors also conduct classical guidance.The data obtained through the initial interview reveal that the classical guidance is carried out through WhatsApp Group.The classical guidance serves as an information delivery facility, with a number of materials in PowerPoint presentations.Scribe videos, and other videos, sent through WhatsApp Group.Besides, the school counselors also frequently adopt Google Classroom and Zoom, along with Google Form, to respond to reflective questions.The tendency to conduct online asynchronous classical guidance signifies the one-way communication among school counselors and students.
The complexity of online counseling and the less practical classical guidance have indicated that online media usage in guidance and counseling services should be investigated intensively.Thus, this study aims to illustrate the implementation of online guidance and counseling services during the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the constraints experienced by the school counselors.Specifically, this study aims to identify: (1) the online media frequently used by the school counselors for the classical guidance; (2) online media used in individual and group counseling; and (3) the rationales behind those online media selections.

METHOD
This descriptive quantitative study used the survey method.The data were analyzed by estimating the frequencies and percentages, which were then visualized in the pie and bar charts.This study involved 288 Department of Guidance and Counseling, Universitas Sanata Dharma graduates who worked as school counselors in junior, senior, and vocational schools.The participants were from different areas of Indonesia, namely North Sumatera, Lampung, Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi, Java (West, Central, and East), Kalimantan (West and East), Bali, Sumba, Sulawesi, and Papua.This study adopted a simple random technique, with 50% samples in each area, since it had time limitations and considered similar opportunities from every region of the participants.Thus, the total participants were 114 people (50%).However, only 106 (around 37%) of participants had been obtained in 2 months through the Online Media Usage Questionnaire, distributed through Google Form.
The survey method facilitated this study to attain more significant information from the respondents.Meanwhile, the adopted questionnaire consisted of 20 items (close-ended questions) for the try-out phase and 22 items (close-ended questions) for the research stage.The components covered in the questionnaire were: (1) identity, (2) technological and informatics competence, (3) online media selection reasoning, (4) the online media usage frequency for the classical guidance, (5) the frequency of online media used in the individual and group counseling, and (7) self-made and self-developed media for the guidance and counseling services.The questionnaire was validated by experts on online guidance and counseling media content.The content validity test was carried out to identify the conformity between the item formulation and the questionnaire's components (outline).Simultaneously, the questionnaire items' readability was completed by 26 school counselors.
The validity test results on the conformity between the questionnaire's outline and research purposes were explained narratively.The experts' suggestions in the form of qualitative data were not quantified, as presented in Table 1.Meanwhile, the results of the questionnaire's readability test from 26 counselors were in the form of recommendations.The readability test covers the delivery in the Google Form, conformity between the answer with the reality, clarity of item formulation, and the answer.The detailed results of the readability test are presented in Table 2.The conformity between the outline and purposes have been excellent.
2 Identity 1.The economical status option (high, middle, and low) is less operational.It should target the more detailed information, such as the monthly family income, or provide more apparent options with clear definitions of the high, middle, and low economy.
2. One of the options on the individual counseling services said that it could be scheduled.It might trap people to believe that individual counseling could be scheduled, while it could not.

Technology and informatics competencies
The provided items could not reveal the teachers' technology and informatics competencies.It only identified their relevant efforts to improve their competencies, such as by attending training.The instruments initially aimed to see the school counselors' competencies that had been implemented.4 The online media selection rationale The items had not identified teachers' reasoning in choosing particular online media.They only reveal the information on the presence of schools' guidance and counseling websites.5 Frequency of online media usage in classical guidance service 1.The items did not correspond with the item purpose to reveal the frequency of online media usage.The provided items only reveal the information on the frequently used guidance and counseling website menus.
2. Inconsistencies on the concept of Internet, website, application, and media had been observed.6 Frequency of online media usage in individual and group counseling services 1.A discrepancy between the item formulation and the item purpose was found.The item aimed to identify the frequency of online media usage, while it revealed information on the reason for online media selection.
2. There was an error or typo.The word frequently was written as always.7 Experts assisted online guidance and counseling media development.
The items were great.
8 Self-made guidance and counseling media.
The technology and informatics concepts were overlapped.

RESULTS
The 106 participants involved in this study consist of 68.9% female and 31.1% male.The detailed information about the participants is presented in Table 3.Interestingly, most of the participants in this study are female school counselors with bachelor's degrees in guidance and counseling programs working in city private schools.Besides, the certified and uncertified teachers, the status of permanent and non-permanent teachers in the education institutions, and the level of junior and senior high school students were spread equally.One of the required questions provides no correct answer, while the participants were obligated to fill it, in order to submit their responses.The connected question should be separated.

4 Online media application
Other than Google Meet and Zoom, some schools used Moodle, Google Classroom, Edmodo, and Instagram.

5 The answer example
The answer alternatives for some items are confusing, so the answer examples should be provided.

6 Counselors' behavior and response
There should be items on school counselors' behavior and response to online learning. 1

DISCUSSION
Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, guidance and counseling services are carried out online, so Internet accessibility and stability become essential.Consequently, asynchronous counseling held through Google Classroom becomes a relatively reasonable choice for school counselors.Furthermore, Google Classroom provides uncomplicated access for the teachers and students to hold the learning process at any time and place, with the Internet connection (Nurhayati, Az-Zahra, & Herlambang, 2019;Putri & Dewi, 2019;Widyantara, 2020).
The flexibility and accessibility of Google Classroom have increased the efficiency of the distanced learning (Wijaya, 2016).Additionally, Google Classrooms also simplify the materials delivery, students' work submission, the scoring process, teacher-students communication, time management, and mobile application access (Bakhtiar, Wulandari, & Marlina, 2019).Thus, Google Classroom carries excellent features for classical guidance.Recently, Google Classroom also can serve as the information carrier (Pustika, Astuti, & Suratman, 2019).However, other than those superior qualities, Google Classroom also possesses a number of weaknesses.First, the interaction dynamics between the school counselors and students in this media tend to only focus on materials delivery.Besides, it has minimum features that may bring confusion for its users.

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In addition to Google Classroom, Google Forms has facilitated the online guidance process since it offers a number of beneficial facilities (Aji, Nurpitasari, Hanum, Akbar, & Putra, 2020).In detail, Google Form can be used to: (1) disseminate questionnaires to the students, (2) filing of the assessment results since the responses are automatically stored in Google Drive, and (3) spend the time efficiently (Batubara, 2016;Mulatsih, 2020).
Online counseling can be complicated (Ifdil & Ardi, 2013;Kirana, 2019;Prasetya, 2017).The minimum internet access accessibility and financial capability is one of the obstacles in the online counseling services.In this study, online counseling is mainly carried out synchronously through chat and textually.The synchronous mode is selected due to the students' Internet accessibility and stability, financial state, and technological competencies.Besides, a proper Internet connection is highly required in online counseling.Even online counseling through video calls can be felt like face-to-face counseling with a speedy Internet connection (Pasmawati, 2016).
This study identifies that the students mostly have sufficient financial ability to attend online learning.Consequently, the chatting method might have been selected due to students' frequent smartphone access rather than laptops.In contrast, a study carried out by Fauzi, Heiriyah, & Matarif (2020) show that the online guidance and counseling services was obstructed by the students' inability to purchase smartphone and Internet quota, as well as slow phone response.It indicates the diverse situation in the online guidance services.From the perspective of the school counselors, synchronous counseling is selected due to their skills and views on their students' situations.
Petrus & Sudibyo (2017) state that people have the tendency to efficiently communicate their idea and feel when they are unobserved and give no verbal sign during the counseling process.Linear to this idea, counseling online is popular for the people who are afraid to attend or being cautious in faceto-face counseling (Barnett, 2005;Lange, Van De Ven, & Schrieken, 2003).Besides, the geographical (Sussman, 2004) and physical limitation sometimes also become the reason why people choose online counseling (Maples & Han, 2008).
In Malaysia, online counseling has grown rapidly and gains positive responses from counselors.However, most of the counselors still prefer face-to-face counseling (Zamani, Nasir, & Yusooff, 2010).A survey involving 409 Malaysian college students reveals that 35% of the respondents prefer online counseling and do not wish to participate in face-to-face counseling.It indicates that most of the students like online counseling better than face-to-face counseling (Wong, Bonn, Tam, & Wong, 2018).
The WhatsApp application is adopted in online counseling due to its simplicity and students' dominating Internet connection issues.People have been highly familiarized with the WhatsApp application.Besides, this application also offers personal and group chat features that enable individual and group counseling implementation.A study also suggests that the WhatsApp application is selected in the counseling process due to its simplicity and flexibility (Puspita, Elita, & Sinthia, 2020;Sukoco KW & Budiman S, 2019).Also, this application can be improved easily (Budianto, Hidayah, & Aziz, 2019).Other than WhatsApp, email and video calls have been observed to be used in the cyber counseling process.However, the Internet connection issue has forced school counselors to avoid the use of video calls.Besides, the massive adoption of WhatsApp for the cyber counseling process in Indonesia suggests that synchronous communication through chat has been popular in this country.Also, another study shows that individual counseling through chatting is more effective than counseling through video (Barak, Hen, Boniel-Nissim, & Shapira, 2008;Dowling & Rickwood, 2013).

CONCLUSION
The school counselors have massively used Google Classroom in the classical or group guidance due to its accessibility and excellent features.Meanwhile, Google Form is observed to be frequently used to gather and analyze the students' data.For individual or group counseling, WhatsApp becomes the most popular application since it requires no strong Internet connection and is accessible.The results of this study can be used as the fundamental to improve school counselors' technological literacy and competencies required in online synchronous and asynchronous guidance and counseling services.Their technological competencies can be enhanced through intensive training.

Figure 2 .Figure 4 .
Figure 2. The Frequency of Online Application and Media Usage

Table 3 . Description of the Participants
Specific answerThe answer should be explicitly made, primarily for the definition of video call and voice notes.The online media that provide video call features are WhatsApp, Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, while the one with voice note feature is WhatsApp.