Evaluation of the Emergency Distance Education Process Starting with the Covid 19 Pandemic from the Perspective of Teaching Staf

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused restrictions and shutdowns affecting all industries worldwide. The scope of the steps taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic, universities in Turkey also began to provide distance education in March 2020. This process has provided an important experience in which the education system is questioned on the basis of educational infrastructure, lecturers and students. The experience of a nationwide transformation in such a short period of time in the education system is considered to be unique. In this study, it is aimed to create a decision support document by compiling this valuable experience and suggestions for further improvement of the higher education system. In this context, the opinions and recommendations of teaching staff regarding the distance education process were taken with the help of surveys which were responded by 744 lecturers from 84 universities of Turkey. As a result of the study, it was seen that factors such as the type of university, distance education experience, and age make a difference in the views of the lecturers towards distance education. In addition, the determinations and suggestions of the instructors that they stated by openended expressions were compiled under main headings. This process experienced offers an important opportunity to question the current educational structure and to improve it further. As also stated in the survey results, it is predicted that the weight of distance education in higher education will also increase at post-pandemic term. Therefore, it is thought that the necessary steps should be taken in the light of the experiences in order to make the next process more efficient