Distance Education in Higher Education Institutions during the Pandemic: Communication Academics’ Perspectives

The Covid-19 pandemic, which started in China and has spread all over the world, has had various social, political and economic consequences. With new measures implemented due to this pandemic in Turkey, particularly in the field of education, the 2020–2021 spring semester was officially declared to be completed through distance education, effective as of March 16, 2020. In this study, the problems in distance education were examined in the light of the distance education experiences of communication academics teaching at communication faculties in Turkey during the pandemic. Focusing on the relationship between education and communication, the study aimed to reveal communication academic staff’s evaluation and views of distance education. The research, which used a questionnaire to obtain qualitative and quantitative data, was carried out by reaching 91 participants, who constitute a sample of 1100 communication academics who teach at 65 communication faculties (private and state), by e-mail. The results were analyzed through 5-point Likert scales under the categories titled (i) Criteria for communication conditions, (ii) Levels of agreement with propositions related to face-to-face education methods, (iii) Levels of agreement with propositions of distance education methods, (iv) Levels of agreement with the effectiveness of distance education, and (v) Perspectives on the instructional methods by the content of the course, and interpreted in light of the qualitative data about the general assessment of the distance education process during the pandemic. Analysis results of frequency tests, descriptive tests and qualitative data showed that communication preferences were an important factor in determining the efficiency of training methods. While the face-to-face education model is preferred over distance education due to its efficiency by communication academics, they attribute the success of distance education to using visual, audio and written materials. In addition, the success of distance education and face-to-face education models was found to vary by the nature of the course (applied-theoretical).