The Views of University Students About the Achievements and Motivations of the Distance Education Process During the Pandemic Period

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the views of students about the achievements and motivations of thedistance education processes in universities during the pandemic period. The working group consists of 68 prospective teachers who continue their undergraduate programs in different departments of a private university in Northern Cyprus in the 2019-2020 spring academic year. All these participantsarestudying at thevariousdepartments of theFaculty of Education as 17 are in Pre-school Education, 28 in PrimaryEducationMathematics, 6 in PrimaryEducation, 1 in HistoryTeaching, 12 in Special Needs Education, 4 of them arestudying in Guidance and Psychological Counseling. The study is a qualitative study and the design of the study is determined as a case study. 42 female and 26 male teacher candidates participated in the study group. The majority of the participants are prospective teachers studying in their final year at university. While choosing the participants, easily accessible case sampling from purposeful sampling type was used. A Semi-structured interview form was used as a toolfordata collection. Later, the opinions of the experts were obtained and the interview questions were re-arranged accordingly and applied to the participants. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the psychological trauma experienced by teacher candidates during distance education at thepandemicperiodaffects both the success and motivation of their lessons.