Understanding the usage of whatsapp among academicians of higher learning institutions in Malaysia

Abstract

Instant messaging, specifically WhatsApp has been used entirely in daily communication across the world. Undoubtedly, education sector has become among the most that use instant message widely, be it among the academicians, the administrative staff or even between students and academicians. The usage of WhatsApp is becoming more prevalent among academicians of higher learning institutions. It is not only used for personal communication, but also used to manage their job responsibilities such as supervision, administrative task and also organizing events. The research objective of this study is to understand the usage of WhatsApp among academicians of higher learning institutions in Malaysia and to understand its challenges and implications on their work-life balance. Comprehensive literature review from previous researches have been done to gather information on the usage and implication of WhatsApp in academic field followed with quantitative method of online and in-person questionnaires distribution as one of the tools to gain data from respondents, which comprises of academicians of various positions. Another approach of data collection was a qualitative method, which is done by having an interview session of selected participants in academic field. The result of this study shows that academicians are happy when they are using WhatsApp as a medium of communication among their colleagues and agreed that WhatsApp has helped them a lot in their work as an academician. They have become more productive as workrelated discussions are made easy using the WhatsApp group chat feature. Yet, this has developed a conflict in their work-life balance as they need to be alert with workrelated matters even during their off-days. The analysis of this study may be useful for academicians and researcher s for understanding the productivity of WhatsApp users and the relationship among their professional community.