Determining the attitudes of sports sciences faculty students towards distance education during the pandemic period

Objective: It is aimed that determining the attitudes of the students towards distance education and the factors affecting these attitudes in this study. Material and Methods: This research was carried out with 457 students who aged 18 years and over on a voluntary basis. Participants of the study were student in four Departments which are Physical Education and Sports Teaching, Coaching Education, Sports Management and Recreation in Aydın Adnan Menderes University, Faculty of Sports Sciences in the spring term of the 2020-2021 academic year. In the research, "The Attitude Scale towards Distance Education" which is consists of 5 likert type and 35 items was used. The dependent variable of the study was the attitude towards distance education. Age, gender, department, class, income status, place of distance education, weekly online course hours, computer access and the number of individuals receiving online education in the family were the independent variables. The obtained data were analyzed with t-test, Anova and Tukey tests in SPSS package program. The results were considered significant with p<.05 at the 95% confidence interval. Results: When the attitude scores of the students who received compulsory distance education during the pandemic period were examined, 45.1% (n=206) were undecided about distance education, 27.8% (n=127) had a positive attitude, while 27.1% (n=124) had a negative attitude has been determined. A statistically significant difference was found in favor of the students' attitudes towards distance education and the age variable in favor of the 23 and over participants, and in the class variable in favor of the first grade students (p<.05). There was no difference depending on gender, department, monthly income, distance education place, weekly course hours, computer access and other online participants in the family (p>.05). Conclusion: When the results of the study are evaluated, it can be said that the rate of positive and negative attitudes of students towards distance education was close to each other, but the majority of them were undecided. On the other hand, attitude scores of students who aged 23 and over and parallel to this, 4th grade students were significantly higher. We believe that in the event of a transition to distance education due to pandemics or disasters in the future, developing different strategies for students studying in departments where such applied courses more than theoretical lessons will contribute to the development of a positive attitude towards distance education. Keywords: Attitude, Distance Education, Pandemic, Student Of Sports Science.