Virtual Classroom Instruction during Covid-19 Pandemic and Students' Opinions

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic has affected all the countries around the world. It has huge effect upon all areas as well as education. Since the beginning of the pandemic schools were closed as well as universities. Turkey’s decision was to move on distant education for universities. However, not all universities were ready for a complete distant education. For that reason, few universities needed to use online educational platforms such as Google Classroom. Minimal interaction between the instructors and students caused heavy reliance on the homework assignments. Although there were instructors who used online exams still, most of them used a traditional approach in education. Thus, purpose of this study was to investigate pandemic’s effect on education. For that reason, opinion of 16 students who were studying at science education department at 4th grade level was taken via a semi structured survey.  Purposive sampling method was used for the study. For that reason 4th grade students were selected for the study. Since those students were about to become teachers, it is acknowledged that they would also had full comprehension on the given education and its positive and negative sides. Four themes emerged as a conclusion. Those themes were, flexibility of distant education and its effect on instruction, importance of feedback, meaningful learning and, assessment and evaluation. Results were discussed under the respective themes.