Psychological Support Application Using The Real-Time Webrtc: A Case Study Of Undergraduate In Malaysian And Indonesian Higher Learning Institutions

Abstract

This paper presents the investigation of a psychological support application using the Web Real-Time Telecommunication, or WebRTC, in helping undergraduates who experienced mental health due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.  In this study, the psychological support application using WebRTC was developed to assist undergraduates in dealing with mental and psychological health problems encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The case study was conducted by distributing a survey consisting of the sharing, consulting and profiling modules of the application that have to be answered by the respondents.  This application implements WebRTC as a platform for the user of the application to ‘randomly’ call another user. A user can choose whether to be the caller, the receiver, or both. The caller would be able to call the receiver when the specifications are chosen while the receiver is only able to receive a call. If both are chosen, the user would be able to initiate and receive a call. In order to connect one user to another in peer-to-peer communication, a signalling server is used.  The results obtained in this case study showed that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected undergraduates’ mental health and the developed application is able to help the undergraduates in healing their mental health.  The developed application can improve the uses of other sharing platforms such as Face Time and WhatsApp Call.