Challenge Accepted: Experiences of Turkish Faculty Members at the Time of Emergency Remote Teaching
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic caught everyone unprepared. Higher education institutions were expected to be the least affected due to their long history of distance education, which has enabled the development of expertise and technical infrastructure, but were they? The present study focuses on faculty members’ experiences at the time of emergency remote teaching and afterwards. The survey method was devised to conduct the study. An online questionnaire called the Emergency Remote Teaching Views Ques-tionnaire was developed by the researchers and administered at higher education institutions throughout Turkey. With a combination of conven-ience and snowball sampling, 351 faculty members from 72 different pub-lic and private higher education institutions were reached. The descriptive analysis of the data revealed that almost 62% of the faculty members had never taken any form of training regarding online distance education be-fore the Covid-19 pandemic. Although one fifth of the faculty members indicated that they had had distance education experience three times or more before the pandemic, around 62% of them encountered remote teaching for the first time. Many faculty members indicated that they spent more time on remote teaching than face-to-face teaching; they had trouble following students’ development; the students were disinterested in the classes; they had technical problems, but they also received support from their institutions. Although only one fourth of the faculty members reported being unsure about the quality of their remote teaching, three fourths of them believed that it was not as fruitful as face-to-face teach-ing. This was especially evident in the area of assessment and evaluation. Based on these results, it can be concluded that higher education institu-tions were caught unprepared, but their adaptation was very quick.
Downloads
References
Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2011). Going the distance: Online education in the United States. Sloan Consortium.
Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37(2), 122–147.
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education. Routledge.
Cevrimici Egitimler. (n.d.). Teaching and learning development application and research center. https://ogem.atauni.edu.tr/cevrimici-egitimler/
Chiasson, K., Terras, K., & Smart, K. (2015). Faculty perceptions of moving a face-to-face course to online instruction. Journal of College Teaching & Learning (TLC), 12(3), 321–240. https://doi.org/10.19030/tlc.v12i3.9315
Durak, G., Çankaya, S., & İzmirli, S. (2020). Examining the Turkish universities’ distance education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Necatibey Faculty of Education Electronic Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 14(1), 787–809. https://doi.org/10.17522/balikesirnef.743080
Fathema, N., Shannon, D., & Ross, M. (2015). Expanding the technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine faculty use of learning management systems (LMSs) in higher education institutions. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 11(2), 210–232.
Fraenkel, J. R., & Wallen, N. E. (2006). How to design and evaluate research in education. McGraw-Hill.
Gares, S. L., Kariuki, J. K., & Rempel, B. P. (2020). Community matters: Student instructor relationships foster student motivation and engagement in an emergency remote teaching environment. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3332–3335. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00635
Garrison, R. (2009). Implications of online and blended learning for the conceptual development and practice of distance education. International Journal of E-Learning & Distance Education, 23(2), 93–104. http://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/471/888
Hannay, M., & Newvine, T. (2006). Perceptions of distance learning: A comparison of online and traditional learning. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 2(1), 1–11.
Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., & Bond, A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause Review, 27, 1–12. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning
Holme, T. A. (2020). Introduction to the Journal of Chemical Education Special Issue on insights gained while teaching chemistry in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2375–2377. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c01087
Holton, A. J. (2020). Implementation of an emergency multisection online general chemistry curriculum in response to COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2878–2883. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00681
Jeffery, K. A., & Bauer, C. F. (2020). Students’ responses to emergency remote online teaching reveal critical factors for all teaching. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2472–2485. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00736
Johnson, N., Veletsianos, G., & Seaman, J. (2020). U.S. Faculty and administrators’ experiences and approaches in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Online Learning, 24(2), 6–21. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i2.2285
Kyne, S. H., & Thompson, C. D. (2020). The COVID cohort: Student transition to university in the face of a global pandemic. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3381–3385. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00769
Lebenicnik, M., Pitt, I., & Istenic Starcic, A. (2015). Use of online learning resources in the development of learning environments at the intersection of formal and informal learning. The student as autonomous designer. Center for Educational Policy Studies, 5(2), 95–113.
Leidner, D. E., & Jarvenpaa, S. L. (1995). The use of information technology to enhance management school education: A theoretical view. MIS Quarterly, 19(3)265–291.
Maria Hagan, J., & Wassink, J. (2016). New skills, new jobs: Return migration, skill transfers, and business formation in Mexico. Social Problems, 63(4), 513–533. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spw021
Mohmmed, A. O., Khidhir, B. A., Nazeer, A., & Vijayan, V. J. (2020). Emergency remote teaching during Coronavirus pandemic: The current trend and future directive at Middle East College Oman. Innovative Infrastructure Solutions, 5(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-020-00326-7
Osman, M. E. (2020). Global impact of COVID-19 on education systems: The emergency remote teaching at Sultan Qaboos University. Journal of Education for Teaching, 46(4), 463–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1802583
Perets, E. A., Chabeda, D., Gong, A. Z., Huang, X., Fung, T. S., Ng, K. Y., . . . Yan, E. C. Y. (2020). Impact of the emergency transition to remote teaching on student engagement in a non-STEM undergraduate chemistry course in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2439–2447. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00879
Petillion, R. J., & McNeil, W. S. (2020). Student experiences of emergency remote teaching: Impacts of instructor practice on student learning, engagement, and well-being. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2486–2493. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00733
Raza, S. A., Qazi, W., Khan, K. A., & Salam, J. (2021). Social isolation and acceptance of the Learning Management System (LMS) in the time of COVID-19 pandemic: An expansion of the UTAUT model. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 59(2), 183–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633120960421
Sahu P. (2020). Closure of universities due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Impact on education and mental health of students and academic staff. Cureus, 12(4), e7541. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.7541
Sandi-Urena, S. (2020). Experimentation skills away from the chemistry laboratory: Emergency remote teaching of multimodal laboratories. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3011–3017. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00803
Sayan, H. (2020). Assessment of faculty members’ views on distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic process. AJIT-e: Online Academic Journal of Information Technology, 11(42), 100–122. https://doi.org/10.5824/ajite.2020.03.004.x
Schlesselman, L. S. (2020). Perspective from a teaching and learning center during emergency remote teaching. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 84(8), 1042–1044. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe8142
Shim, T. E., & Lee, S. Y. (2020). College students’ experience of emergency remote teaching due to COVID-19. Children and youth services review, 119, 105578.
Sikora, A., Irby, S. M., Hall, B. L., Mills, S. A., Koeppe, J. R., Pikaart, M. J., . . . Roberts, R. (2020). Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by the Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Lab (BASIL) CURE consortium: Reflections and a case study on the switch to remote learning. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 3455–3462. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00729
Volery, T., & Lord, D. (2000). Critical success factors in online education. International Journal of Educational Management, 14(5), 216–223.
Webster, J., & Hackley, P. (1997). Teaching effectiveness in technology-mediated distance learning. Academy of Management Journal, 40(6), 1282–1309.
Wilcox, B., & Vignal, M. (2020). Recommendations for emergency remote teaching based on the student experience. Physics Teacher, 58(6), 374–375. https://doi.org/10.1119/10.0001828
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitted article, which will be published online in the Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal (for short: CEPS Journal) by University of Ljubljana Press (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, Kardeljeva ploščad 16, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). The Author’s/Authors’ name(s) will be evident in the article in the journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in the hands of the publisher.
- The Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit themselves to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.