A Research on Academician Opinions on Distance Education in the COVID-19 Process

Abstract

With the Covid-19 pandemic process, educational activities all over the world faced a great challenge. This epidemic, which has a very high risk of transmission, prevented students from taking lessons in the classroom, created social distances and made distance education compulsory. While distance education offers a solution to prevent interruption of educational activities during the pandemic process, on the other hand, it requires teachers and students to adapt to new learning roles through information technologies in order to be successful. However, the adequacy or success of the distance education process is also discussed. The views of the educator (academician) using distance education on this subject are very important. This research is important in terms of reflecting the views of academics. Within the scope of the research, the views of academicians at a state university in the Eastern Anatolia Region on distance education were examined. An online questionnaire was sent to all academicians at this university and evaluations were made over 93 academics who returned to the questionnaires. As a result of the data obtained, it was seen that the academicians had both positive and negative opinions about distance education. In particular, female academics' opinions on distance education are more positive. However, factors such as age, experience, and title did not have an effect on views on distance education. Again, most of the academicians do not find distance education alone sufficient, but think that it will be much more effective when reinforced with formal education.