A quantitative content analysis of Turkish state universities’ official websites in terms of their preparedness and actions during emergency distance education in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic period

Abstract

Most universities worldwide had to temporarily interrupt face-to-face education and start Emergency Distance Education (EDE) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It is useful to identify the difficulties and problems that universities faced in this process in order that they can carry out a similar process more efficiently in the future. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct an in vivo examination of EDE from the institutional perspective within the scope of universities during the pandemic period in Turkey. To this end, all state university websites were searched according to 27 criteria which were determined to set out the EDE readiness status of universities. The results revealed that higher education institutions had difficulty in providing sufficient pedagogical and technical guidance to academic staff due to the rapid transition. With respect to students, distance course contents, activities and announcements were not equitably accessible for students from foreign countries and those with disabilities owing to the lack of information and communications technology (ICT) tools, internet connection, translation, etc. A remarkable number of higher education institutions preferred the features of distance education tools such as cost, familiarity, stability, availability of technical support, and short preparation time rather than their pedagogical affordances.

Understanding online retail brand equity: a cross-cultural perspective

“…As a large amount of content is found on websites, several methods were developed to analyze and extract meaningful information from this data set. One of these methods is content analysis (Keskin et al , 2022). Bryman (2001) defined it as a research technique for concluding by systematically and objectively identifying specific characteristics of communication content.…”

Organizational preparedness domains and indicators of educational organizations for students with disabilities in pandemic times: A scoping review

“…In being as comprehensive as possible in the identification of primary evidence of the practicalities of time and funding constraints (Kenny et al, 2013), several systematic reviews on preparedness in educational organizations in crisis times were screened beforehand to identify key search words used (Weiner et al, 2008;World Health Organization (WHO), 2011;Javed and Niazi, 2015;Staupe-Delgado and Kruke, 2017;Patel et al, 2020;Begičević Ređep, 2021;Carrión-Martínez et al, 2021;Ceballos et al, 2021;ElSaheli-Elhage, 2021;Giannouli et al, 2021;Guterres, 2021;Keskin et al, 2021;Khanal et al, 2021;Kundu and Bej, 2021;Montanari et al, 2021;Ng et al, 2021). These keywords were pooled, systematized, and added to the key search terms of the current research.…”

“…The above inequity referred as "digital divide" in literature has been the core interest of studies conducted in the US among other countries, since the mid-1990s. Schools with their educational programs have a crucial role in mitigating the digital divide by understanding the needs and capabilities of their communities (Keskin et al, 2021;Sofianidis et al, 2021).…”

The Effect of Knowledge Sharing, Attitude, and Satisfaction on Novice University Students’ Online Learning Achievement

“…The Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020) ater which almost all educational institutions in the world switched to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). ERT is a temporary and often limited educational activity that is used to continue the teaching process in extraordinary conditions such as pandemics and natural disasters (Keskin et al, 2022;Nicolai & Triplehorn, 2003;Sinclair, 2002). According to Isman (2011), Distance Education (DE) was used for different purposes in the period before the introduction of ERT.…”

“…In the educational context, ICT is also called instructional technology (Seels & Richey, 2012). In terms of DE and ERT, the internet infrastructure, Learning Management Systems (LMS) and synchronous/asynchronous communication tools are used as channels (Keskin et al, 2022). Therefore, these tools are important with regard to the efficiency of the teaching process.…”