Abstract:

Covid-19 has caused the death of approximately 7 million people and caused severe problems in all areas of life, especially in education. Upon the detection of the first case in Turkey, education was suspended in all educational institutions on March 16, 2020, and it was decided to continue education in a digital environment through distance and open education for the 2019-2020 spring semester. This study aimed to evaluate the opinions and thoughts of veterinary faculty students about the methods and technical possibilities of distance education courses. A questionnaire was administered to 1599 students via "Google Docs" between December 10, 2020, and January 11, 2021, to those who were willing to participate in the survey among 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th-year students who were studying in veterinary faculties in Turkey and had face-to-face and distance education experience. The statistical package program was used for the SPPS 25 (IBM Corp. Released 2017. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.). Descriptive frequencies and percentages were given for categorical variables. In the study, it was determined that 67.2% of the participants used their computers. However, lack of professional development (75.4%), technical problems (73.3%), access to the internet (56.8%), etc. were identified as the difficulties of online courses. Although students found the course duration sufficient, they thought the courses should be supported with PDF, Word, and PowerPoint documents (78.2%). In addition to the security concerns of distance education, students also stated that they did not prefer distance education because veterinary medicine education is a practical field and because of technical problems. Students' concerns, such as professional development and professional-social interaction due to being away from school, can be addressed with support training after the pandemic.

Keywords: