Online Course Viewings and Their Effects on Performances in Covid-19 Distance Education Period

Despite numerous studies examining student preferences in terms of live and recorded lecture viewings, the effects of lesson viewings on online platforms have been limitedly studied. In this study, the rates of attending live lectures and viewing lecture recordings in the Covid-19 era were examined, and attendance and viewings effects on final scores in these courses were evaluated. For this purpose, data from online education systems of live and record viewings for Turkish Literature, mathematics, and biostatistics classes in the spring semester of 2021-2022, belonging to 13 Turkish universities and 2082 students, were utilized. We found that (1) Thirteen percent of the students did not view any live or recorded courses, and approximately one-third did not enter the final exam; (2) The students in state universities have significantly higher record viewing rates than those in private universities with medium effect size, (3) Females present significantly higher live viewings and record viewing rates than males with small effect sizes; (4) Biostatistics has moderate-high correlations between viewing rates and final scores. On the other hand, there are no or weak relationships between the viewing rates and final scores for Turkish literature and mathematics, in which study materials can be widely accessed from many sources different from biostatistics.