Online Education in Higher Education Institutions During the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Case of Türkiye

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors share a perspective on the impacts of COVID-19 that draws upon their experience as leaders of business schools in Asia, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Abstract: Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has influenced the world, has affected the countries in manyareas. As in all countries under the influence of pandemic, education shave started to be provided through distance education in our country. In this research, it is aimed to try to under stand the experiences of science teachers working in secondary school in depth about what happened in distance education during COVID-19 pandemic process. In this context, the research was carried out with a phenomenology pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods. Research working in middle schools in various regions of Turkey's 75 Science teachers were involved. First, the approval of Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University Ethics Committee (95728670-044-E.10149) was obtained in order to collect the research data. The data were collected via “google drive” with a semi-structured interview form. The content analysis was taken as basis in the analysis of data. Some interpretations were made directly from the opinions and findings were supported by direct citations. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that science teachers did not know what the pandemic was before the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been determined that they have problems such as internet connection in the distance education process, communicating with students, low participation rate of students and exposure to the pressure of school administration. In addition, besides the teaching methods and techniques used in the course of the distance education process, it was observed that the materials they used were changed, and they had concerns about not being able to complete the distance education program and laboratory / work shop activities. Also it was determined that the pandemic event mostly affected the use of educational Technologies and their Professional development positively. In this process, it was concluded that the teachers were anxious due to the lack of information that could occur in the students, they felt in sufficient in the distance education process, but they had the opportunity to improve themselves. Suggestions were made on to ward the results of the research. *Araştırma T.C. Sağlık Bakanlığı Sağlık Hizmetleri Genel Müdürlüğü bünyesinde açılan Bilimsel Araştırma Platformu tarafından onaylanmıştır. Dr. Öğr. Üyesi, Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Matematik ve Fen Bilimleri Eğitimi Bölümü Asst. Prof. Dr. Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Faculty of Education, Department of Mathematics and Science Education 0000 0001 7997 1018 busrabakioglu@gmail.com *** Doç. Dr., Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Matematik ve Fen Bilimleri Eğitimi Bölümü Assoc. Prof. Dr., Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Faculty of Education, Department of Mathematics and Science Education 0000-0001-5064-6983 mustafacevik@kmu.edu.tr 110 Büşra Bakioğlu – Mustafa Çevik Turkish Studies, 15(4) Structured Abstract: Introduction and Purpose: In the world COVID-19 case has started to increase social anxiety and worry in many countries (Lin, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic directly affected our training activities and brought some anxiety with it. Because when this epidemic spread to the world, the majority of countries announced that schools were closed temporarily, and it was reported that approximately 1.6 billion children and young people were affected by the pandemic, which affects more than 91 percent of students worldwide (Miks & McIlwaine, 2020). In Turkey, formal and non-formal education in schools closed as of 16 March is the biggest public area affected by pandemics. In order to provide an effective education and training in this field in Turkey as in other countries of the world, distance education using digital technology carries out this process. The presence of positive or negative situations related to distance education being carried out digitally will help us to present a more perfect education model now and in the future. In the literature, there are no studies in which science teachers' views on distance education are included in the pandemic process. In this context, the main objective is to gather the opinions of Science teachers who are working in Turkey in middle schools related to distance education they perform.