THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE EDUCATION AND STUDENT OPINIONS DURING THE PANDEMIC PERIOD: THE EXAMPLE OF CYPRUS UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

With the rapid progress of technology and the diversification of education needs, the demonstration of upper-level skills had integrated into the middle school and high school levels. The target audience is set to be university students. Now, the homework given in classrooms called “Smartclass” through the utilization of augmented reality has become widespread and is emerging as a necessity. The skills associated with the 21st Century are now being used in education, work, and even in our daily lives. Because of the Pandemic virüs, the education life had transitioned to be continued online, and still the effects of this transition can not be observed. Where the individuals who are the members of the new generation did not require an adaptation process, those who are at the university level required some time to adapt to the new system. The integration of education and technology had been very fast within the course of the Pandemic. Most institutions and organizations had faced this disruptive stage unguarded and unprepared, thus left facing many problems. A questionnaire is applied to survey students to observe how much these problems are reflected on the students and the extent they have been affected from it.

The purpose of this study is to determine the development of the online tools used for educational purposes during the Pandemic. 67 male and 33 female students who agreed to participate in the research were reached. The data will be transferred to the Statistical Program SPSS by the researcher and all statistical analyzes were carried out with this program. According to the results of the first 18 answers, the Cronbach's Alpha value was checked and this value was found to be 0.742. This ratio shows that the scale has high reliability. As a result, two hypotheses presented in the study were deemed invalid. In the light of the answers given by the students participating in the research, it has been found that online education does not provide sufficient learning and is not a preferred education method. In this context, we recommend making the necessary improvements in the infrastructure, organizing in-service trainings for educators, following the developing technology closely, and making updates according to the needs, in proportion to the responses we have received.. The sample universe of the study is composed of university students. The data gathered will be uploaded to the statistical analysis tool SPSS and all the statistical analysis will be conducted via SPSS.