Abstract
This mixed-methods study aimed at investigating the Turkish higher education learners’ attitudes towards Emergency Online Teaching (EOT) under the Covid-19 pandemic in order to discover the benefits and drawbacks of it. The participants were 251 higher education learners who received the EOT during the Covid-19 crisis in Turkey. Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered by means of a questionnaire in August 2020. Quantitative data were obtained via closed-ended questions with the response on a Likert-scale format. Qualitative data were acquired through open-ended questions. The results showed that the hurried shift to an online instruction by universities in Turkey was not fully satisfactory and the majority of the respondents (74.1%) preferred face-to-face learning to the online format, however, the participants also stated that they felt safer during this pandemic disease thanks to the availability of distant online education. The drawbacks they mentioned included inadequate technological infrastructure or facilities, lack of sufficient teacher-student and peer interaction, lack of learners’ attention and concentration, tediousness of online lessons, learners’ inadequate engagement in class activities, as well as the absence of comprehensive assessment procedure.
Highlights
Online instruction has been defined as the delivery of teaching programmes utilizing the Internet (Chadha and Kumail, 2002), via which the learners can participate in an educational opportunity without being physically at the same location as their teacher (Kamal and Radhakrishnan, 2019, p. 408)
The responses to the other item stating “Online learning is better than face-to-face learning” do not seem contradictory because again a few participants (16.8%) showed agreement and two-thirds of the participants (65.8%) stated that online learning is not better than face-to-face learning. 42.7% of the learners claimed that online teaching does not ensure quality learning while only a few (25.5%) disagreed with them. 43.8% of the participants believed that online learning is problematic while only 28.3% did not believe so
Similar preferences were revealed in some of the studies of online instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia (Chung et al, 2020), Jordan (Alawamleh et al, 2020), and Albania (Xhelili et al, 2021). As for their reasons, which can be attributed to the instruction or teachers, 42.6% of the learners claimed that teachers are not accessible in online learning while about a third of the participating students (32.3%) did not think so
Summary
Online instruction has been defined as the delivery of teaching programmes utilizing the Internet (Chadha and Kumail, 2002), via which the learners can participate in an educational opportunity without being physically at the same location as their teacher (Kamal and Radhakrishnan, 2019, p. 408). Online instruction has been defined as the delivery of teaching programmes utilizing the Internet (Chadha and Kumail, 2002), via which the learners can participate in an educational opportunity without being physically at the same location as their teacher Besides the availability of appropriate infrastructures, such as internet quality and speed and ease of access to online resources, the readiness of both teachers and learners to adapt to this technology is essential for the success of the distance online learning process (Cantrell et al, 2008; Kohan et al, 2017). In contrast to well-planned and carefully designed online instruction, EOT involves the use of fully remote online teaching in lieu of instruction that would otherwise be provided face-to-face or as blended courses and that will certainly return to that format once the crisis or emergency has been alleviated. Attitude levels of learners with poor GPAs were significantly lower than those of learners with better GPAs.” (Tekinarslan, 2008, p. 67)
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