A research on distance education and alienation in academic staff during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, countries have had to review their education policies and make adjustments accordingly. In this regard, distance education has been adopted in universities in Turkiye, and each university has created its own distance education strategy. Distance education, once only a complementary to education, replaced traditional education when the pandemic turned out to be unlikely to end in the short run. Although some universities are experienced in distance education, this sudden pandemic has caused disruptions (digital inequality, technological infrastructure problems, etc.) and unprecedented situations catching most universities off-guard. One of these is the emergence or the change of alienation seen in academic staff due to distance education. The aim of the study is to identify the work alienation of academics during the Covid-19 pandemic and reveal the underlying reasons, with the help of semi-structured interview technique within the framework of the phenomenological approach, one of the qualitative research methods. For this purpose, interviews through the Google Meet application were held with 12 academics. Content analysis was applied to the data obtained from these interviews. As a result, it was found that the interviewed academics were adversely affected by the distance education method and they were not competent enough to use it. It was also revealed that they were unable to identify their demands regarding their economical and technical needs yet at the same time they were not satisfied with the support provided by their institutions.