Exploring transactional distance in online language learning

Throughout history, no one has ever seen so many rapid changes in the world as they have encountered after the 3rd Industrial Revolution. Industrial developments have brought technological developments and innovations and introduced modern web tools in the 21st century. The tendency of change updated the outdated traditional educational system, and researchers started to question if online education may be integrated into the traditional educational system in the future or maybe successfully replace it. Recently, both in our country and in the world, because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this utopic idea has prevailed to be accurate and possible that distance education may replace the traditional education system. Technology and modern web 2.0 tools have been integrated into education and thus, proved to have so many advantages. However, it has brought so many disadvantages, too. One of the most disadvantageous and unfortunate ones is learners' Transactional Distance (TD) handicap, which means the deep feeling of isolation, dissatisfaction, and unwillingness while taking online lessons through web 2.0 tools. In this study, great attention is paid to the notion of TD and the relationship between Online Language Education (OLE) and TD. It is also attempted to find out if web 2.0 tools help reduce TD among learners or not. This study includes 211 high school students studying at a state school- Çukurova Electricity Vocational and Technical High School-ÇEMTAL, Çukurova, Adana and having taken online lessons through EBA and ZOOM applications during the 2020-2021 Educational Year. The study results indicate that student-student interaction has the highest effect on decreasing the TD levels of students. According to the results of demographic data by age and grades, there is no statistically significant difference in the total TD scale. However, the results indicate that especially ages of 15 and 18+ benefit more from the teacher. As the students get older, the interaction between them increases. Similarly, grade 2 students benefit less from the student-student interaction than grades 3 and 4. Related to the results of correlation analysis, all the sub-dimensions of the TD scale have a positive relationship with each other. Student-student and student-online program interaction sub-dimensions have a high positive relationship with the total TD. More investment in students and online programs will help decrease the TD level. Key Words: Online education, Online Learning, OLE, OLL, Transactional Distance, WEB 2.0 tools