Investigating the attitudes and views of university students towards distance education in the context of lifelong learning

This study aims to examine the attitudes and views of university students on distance education within the scope of lifelong learning. In the study a mixed research method and explanatory design were used. In this direction, survey study was used as a quantitative research method to determine the attitude levels of university students and phenomenological design was used as a qualitative study method to determine the views of university students. The research participants consists of students from Bursa Uludağ and Bursa Teknik universities. In the data collecting process "Distance Education Attitude Scale in Lifelong Learning" scale was used for the quantitative data and an open-ended interview form was used for the qualitative data of the study. The participants of 356 university students selected by convenience sampling and after 15 university students selected by purposive sampling for the interview form. The data were collected online via Google Forms. In the analysis process of the study, IBM SPSS Statistics 25 package program was used for quantitative data and the analysis consist of descriptive statistics, independent groups t-test and ANOVA. On the other hand analysing the qualitative data, content analysis and descriptive analysis were used. The most fundamental finding of the study is that the level of attitudes of university students towards distance education in lifelong learning found to be at a medium level. The attitudes of university students differed significantly according to the variables of age, income, marital status, educational level, class, and usage purpose. The attitude level of university students did not show a significant difference according to gender and university variables. In the data obtained from the views of the students, it was seen that university students had a positive view of the use of distance education in lifelong learning, were aware of the social and personal importance of lifelong learning and associated it with the ideas of personal development and not falling behind the age at the level of societies. It was found that they most often learning languages through distance learning activities and using the application Youtube the most as a platform. The views on the future of distance education were influenced mainly by the opinions which are technological developments, the advantages of distance education and learning experience that distance education was applicable during the pandemic period.