Distance education in higher education in the COVID-19 process: A phenomenological research on the experiences of educators

The purpose of this research is to obtain the opinions of the faculty members about the distance education experiences they have experienced by providing effective participation in the Covid-19 pandemic in a total of three periods: spring 2020, fall 2020-2021 and spring. The qualitative method was used in the research and the study group consists of 18 teaching staff working at the faculty of education of a university located in the Western Black Sea. The study was conducted within the scope of phenomenological pattern. Semi-structured interview questions prepared by the researcher were directed to the teaching staff and the answers given by the teaching staff to the questions were recorded with a voice recorder. The transcript of the obtained data was made and the data were analyzed. The analysis was carried out by creating themes and codes based on induction. The themes and codes obtained by the researcher were re-coded by an instructor who is an expert in the field of qualitative research. The Decoders' inter-coder consistency was found to be 90%. In this research, where the views of the teaching staff on distance education in the Covid-19 pandemic process were taken with face-to-face education conducted spatially; They stated that the distance education of the teaching staff is necessary for the continuation of education in emergency situations, they will not prefer the distance education model unless they have to. The reasons for this to work; limited interaction and communication of assessment into troubles with the size, in terms of technological equipment, lack of technological infrastructure/technical issues, this educational model any benefit to the students, explaining the process of the teaching staff in distance education in their own self-assessments concluded that they found only partially successful.