SIGNAL CONSTRAINTS, THE MAIN PROBLEM OF ONLINE LECTURES

Sebastian Martin Hibatullah

The Department of French Language Education, Faculty of Languages and Arts,
Yogyakarta State University
sebastianmartin.2020@student.uny.ac.id

ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 virus is a fear for everyone, all companies are closed, markets
are closed and schools are also closed. All activities are carried out at home, working
from home, learning from home, and worshiping at home. We do all of this to stop the
chain of spreading this virus. Everything is done online, this is the first time we are
doing this. Indeed, advances in technology make things easy, but will it all work out
well?. Signal constraints are thing that we cannot avoid, seeing that there are still many
students who have difficulties when studying online. And this problem is still a serious
problem in Indonesia.
Keyword(s): signal constraints, pandemic, online lectures, lockdown

INTRODUCTION
COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) is a new type of disease caused by a
virus from the coronavirus class, namely SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19. The first case of
this disease occurred in the city of Wuhan, China, at the end of December 2019. After
that, COVID-19 spread between people very quickly and spread to dozens of
countries, including Indonesia, in just a few months. After that, the government take a
lockdown to stop the spread of this virus, all activities outside the home are
prohibited, schools are closed, and companies are temporarily closed. Even though
we do lockdown, there are still some who are exposed to the virus, and it keeps
increasing. Because of the due to the increasing number of positive cases, the
Minister of Education and Culture conducted online schools during the pandemic.
Online school during pandemic is a good way for the government to stop the
spread of the virus. But this can be a problem for students who do not have gadgets to
study, or poor signals in the area. Many of them have poor signal in their area. Signal
problem is their nightmare, they will missed learning class on that day. Until now,
signal constraints were still a problem in online schools.
DISCUSSION
There are some signal constraints in this problem. First, bad signal in their area.
Students whose signal in their home area is poor, will be a problem when studying
online. They have to go to find a good signal, or to the wifi corner. Lucky for those
who live in the city, there are many wifi corners there. But it’s a pity for those who live
in rural areas, wifi corners are hard to find there, and government wifi is not yet avaible.
Second, not having inadequate gadgets. Maybe this problem is not happening
anymore in Indonesia, because gadget has become everyone’s premiere need. If their
gadget is not sufficient for online lectures, they can buy a new one, wich is better than
before. But what is the fate of those who have mediocre income? To buy gadgets, they
have to save first. They can borrow adequate neighbor’s gadget, or borrow money to
buy gadget. But borrowing money to buy gadgets must also considered carefully,
because it greatly affects the financial part of the family.
Lastly, the signal suddenly went bad. This condition often occurs when it rains,
blackouts, and the sim provider being used is bad. Indeed, this problem sometimes
occurs in several places, and it is very annoying during class. This causes delays during
lectures. And as a result, they can’t hear explanations from the lectures clearly. This
problem might be solved by changing their sim provider, but it doesn’t guarantee it will
be better.

CONCLUSION
Seeing this problem, the Government issued a regulation of the Secretary
General of the Ministry of Education and Culture 14 of 2020 concerning technical
guidelines for internet data quota assistance in 2020 to facilitate online learning during
pandemic. This regulation has been running for 4 months, and this is very helpful for
students who object to buying data packages, and can save their costs.
And the Minister of Finance is working on a handphone assistance program for
poor students, and this is still being formulated. In the form of handphone and free data
packages for all students who are in the poor category.
In conclusion, this problem can affect all students. This problem occurs in many
regions in Indonesia. There are still many of them that are not covered by the signal,
their signal is bad, not to mention the signal suddenly becomes bad. This can hamper
their learning during the pandemic.
Actually it’s not only this problems that can hamper the learning process, but
there are many other problems that can hamper their learning process. Such as lack of
understanding of lecture’s explanatios, miscommunication between lectures, poor
lecturer signals, and many more.

2
 Reportedly, the government will implement an offline lecture policy in January
and certainly there is implementation of health protocols. But this also depends on the
conditions of this pandemic. We can see the number of cases of people affected by this
virus increases every day, this does not rule out if the policy is postponed again.

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