On Becoming an Online University in an Emergency Period: Voices From the Students at a State University

This study purposes to examine the emergency transition to distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of university students. Based on this purpose, university students were asked open-ended questions about their distance education experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Transactional Distance Theory was used as the theoretical framework to form the questions and interpret the findings. 441 university students from a state university participated in the study, and 1443 comments were analysed by using text mining techniques. The findings of the study have revealed that students acknowledge the rapid transition positively, but they have also indicated that the effectiveness of distance education is low. The reason for the ineffectiveness was observed as the lack of interactive elements in the content and the low level of communication between faculty members and students. As a result of the findings of the study, several recommendations on how institutions can take precautions are presented.