Student Opinions and Suggestions about Distance Education

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic, which emerged in 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, affected societies very quickly. It has brought about important changes in many fields such as economy, health systems, education and so on. In order to prevent losses in education and adapt to this new situation, countries quickly switched from face-to-face education to distance education. This study, aiming to examine the opinions and suggestions of high school students about the compulsory distance education activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, is a phenomenological study designed in the qualitative research design. The participants of the study have been determined by purposeful sampling method and the data have been collected through a fixed format questionnaire. 151 high school students participated in the study which was carried out between May and June, 2021. The data have been analyzed using the descriptive analysis and content analysis techniques. The results show that high school students experienced various problems such as the internet connection problems, software and hardware problems required for the access, communication problems, motivational problems and so on. However, they got support from their families during this time, and apart from the factors negatively affecting their motivation, there were some factors affecting their motivation positively. They also offered some suggestions for the solution of problems encountered.

Keywords

• Covid-19
• Distance education
• Education
• High school students
• Pandemic
• The Internet

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