Views of Teacher Candidates Views about Emergency Distance Education During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The COVID-19 virus, which emerged in 2019 and turned into an epidemic by affecting the whole world, has deeply shaken all humanitarian phenomena. Educational activities have also been affected by the epidemic process. As a result of the rapid spread of the epidemic, schools were closed in our country as well as all over the world, and education and training services started to be provided remotely. At the university level, students were taking common compulsory courses such as AİİT, English and Turkish Language with distance education before the epidemic, but with the epidemic, all courses were taken by distance education. Although the courses in question are conducted in a planned and programmed manner, a model closer to emergency distance education is applied in the current system rather than distance education. In this study, it was aimed to get the opinions of teacher candidates from different branches studying in the Faculty of Education on emergency distance education and hybrid education. The research was carried out in a public university in the fall semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. It was carried out based on the qualitative research method. The study is based on the situation pattern. In determining the study group, “easily accessible situation sampling” was preferred due to the epidemic conditions. Views of 66 participants were received within the scope of the research. The data of the study was transformed into the “online form” format, and the data were collected online. The obtained data were read carefully, the codes were reached, and the themes were obtained by combining the relevant codes. Considering the opinions of the teacher candidates, it was concluded that problems such as system and internet speed were experienced during the emergency distance education process; emergency distance education was unsuccessful, especially in applied courses such as drama and teaching practice, and economically burdens the candidates as the process requires technological equipment and high-speed internet. In addition, it was revealed that the majority of the candidates did not know the hybrid education, and those who did only heard it by name, and suggestions regarding the process were made as a result of the research.