The effect of emergency remote teaching on the university students’ end-of-term achievement

Levent Yakar

doi:10.31681/jetol.957433

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effect of emergency remote teaching (ERT) on the end-of-term achievement of university students. Accordingly, two sets of end-of-term achievement scores of all students attending Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, a Turkish state university were compared in terms of educational modality. More specifically, the first set was comprised of scores the students obtained from the tests at the end of 2019-2020 academic year when the courses were delivered via face-to-face education while the second set consisted of scores they obtained from the tests at the end of 2020-2021 academic year when the courses were virtually conducted due to ERT exerted by Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the views of students and instructors about the differences between the achievement scores driven by ERT and reflection of actual learning in scores during this period were analyzed. The findings indicated that the achievement scores obtained in associate degree and undergraduate degree programs were significantly increased during ERT while no statistically significant difference was found in the scores obtained in graduate degree programs. The findings also showed that the students and instructors are well aware of the increase in achievement scores, which they attributed to various factors such as lack of exam security and devoting more time to the lesson. They generally agreed that the achievement scores obtained in ERT do not reflect the actual learning level of students. Finally, it was revealed that the subjective perceptions about the change in the achievement scores largely overlapped with the objective statistical results.

Highlights

Events that deeply affect large masses such as war, disaster and pandemic cause very serious changes in the communal living
It was aimed to compare the university students’ achievement scores obtained in face-to-face and remote education and to examine the views of students and instructors on the end-of-term achievement scores the students obtained from the courses which were offered in the form of emergency remote teaching (ERT)
Since the data were drawn from the submitted end-of-term achievement scores for a specific semester, scores of the students who were studying at the faculties of Medicine and Dentistry were not included in the data sets due to the distinctive nature of the programs implemented at these faculties

Summary

Introduction

Events that deeply affect large masses such as war, disaster and pandemic cause very serious changes in the communal living. Global and large-scale changes have been introduced in many facets of life by the pandemic. Within a few months of its declaration as a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020), schools were closed down in 190 countries and 1.57 billion students stayed away from their schools (Giannini et al, 2020). Considering these students with their families, education has been one of the areas severely affected by the pandemic. The transition from faceto-face education to emergency remote teaching has been the most serious change introduced in education during this period

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Results