A Scale Development Study to Determine University Students' Perceptions towards Distance Education

Abstract

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable Likert-type measurement tool to determine how university students perceive distance education, which they experienced during the pandemic (COVID 19) period and is becoming more widespread day by day. In addition, in line with the main purpose answers were sought to the questions how university students perceive distance education and what the variables are that affect these perceptions. This research, which was conducted to determine how university students perceive the distance education they experienced during the epidemic process and the variables affecting this perception, is in a comparative type of relational screening model.
 Methodology: The scanning model is used to detect a situation, individual or object that occurred in the past or is still ongoing, in its own conditions and as it exists. In determining the sample size, the number corresponding to 95% confidence level and 5% acceptable margin of error according to the number constituting the research population and the number corresponding to 5 times the number of items in the scale were taken as the basis. According to these criteria, the sample must be at least 350. The participants of this research are 406 students studying in Anadolu University, Faculty of Health Sciences, and Social Work Undergraduate Programs Turkey in the spring semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The data was collected with the “Distance Education Perception Scale” (DEPS) developed by the researcher and consists of two sections. The first part of DEPS includes 15 open and close-ended questions related to the demographic and personal information of students and their attitudes towards distance education. The second section of DEPS includes 71 statements related to perceptions towards the distance education of students on a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 5 choices, from 1=Strongly Disagree to 5=Strongly Agree. In the analysis of the data, the statistical package SPSS 21.00 was used. Exploratory Factor Analysis method and Varimax Rotation technique were used to understand whether the DEPS consists of measuring the same quality. The reliability coefficient α formula, and the relationship between the response given to each item in the scale and the total score obtained from the scale was calculated using the Item-Total Correlation technique. Students' perceptions of distance education were evaluated using the median, mode and arithmetic mean on the basis of all scales and subscales.
 Findings: The results revealed that the scale used in the collection of data in the research is valid and reliable, students are generally hesitant about distance education and these hesitations increase in terms of practice courses and internship practices, and their perception levels about the benefit and importance of distance education are lower than other dimensions of distance education such as learning and communication, technology and measurement-evaluation. Again, the results of the research show that classroom and opinions and attitudes about distance education are important variables that affect the perceptions of students towards distance education.
 Unique contributor to theory, policy and practice: It is expected that the research results will be guiding in terms of developing distance education policies and studies on improving the quality of education in universities, and will make a significant contribution to the national and international literature and researchers working in the field of distance education.