Investigation of distance education students' opinions on distance education, their expectations on student-student interaction in distance education and their perceptions regarding the feel of community

The aim of this research is to examine the views of associate degree students enrolled in distance education, their expectations about student-student interaction in distance education and their perceptions about the feel of community and to determine the relationship between them. In the study, in which the cross-sectional survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was applied, the participants of the study were students enrolled in distance education in the associate degree program of Mersin Vocational School in the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, the convenience sampling method was utilizied in the selection of the study group and participation in the research was provided on a voluntary basis. Data for the study were collected online via Google Forms. In the first part of the questionnaire, the demographic information of the students is included. In the second part of the survey, there is the Distance Education Students' Views of Distance Education Scale, in the third part, the Scale of Expectations of Distance Education Students Regarding Student-to-Student Interaction in Distance and in the fourth part, the Community Feeling Scale Toward Online Distance Education Environments. The data collected within the scope of the research were analyzed with the SPSS package program and descriptive statistics, normality tests, t test for independent/unrelated groups, Mann-Whitney U test and multiple regression analysis were used in the analysis of the data. According to the results of the research, it has been determined that the views of distance education students towards distance education are slightly above the medium level, they generally agree with the items in the dimension of expectations regarding student-student interaction in distance education courses at a moderate level and their perceptions of the feeling of community in distance education are slightly below the medium level. Distance education students' views on distance education, their expectations of student-student interaction in distance education courses and their perceptions of the feeling of community in distance education did not differ from gender and grade of variables. Finally, when the variables of community feeling in distance education and student-student interaction in distance education courses are included in the regression model, it is seen that both variables have a significant contribution in explaining the views of distance education students about distance education and the feeling of community is more predictive. In this context, it is seen that increasing the feeling of community in distance education and student-student interaction in distance education lessons together will positively increase the views of distance education students about distance education.