Abstract:

The pandemic, which emerged in the last months of 2019 and started with the virus named as COVID-19, adversely affected normal life conditions all around the world. With the World Health Organization declaring the situation as an epidemic as of March 11, 2020, educational institutions with face-to-face education had to switch to distance education. This transition period in Turkey was later defined as Emergency Distance Education (EDE) by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK). The epidemic, which started at a time when most of the higher education institutions were not prepared to continue their distance education activities effectively, required all these institutions to adapt to distance education immediately. For universities that do not have distance education programs, many problems that needed to be overcame in a short amount of time have been emerged. In this study, firstly in a foundation university that provides education within the scope of EDE during the epidemic, the problems that the disabled students, who have the potential to be affected more negatively than other students, in accessing and using distance education systems, and the solutions offered by the relevant units are listed. In line with the main purpose, it has been analyzed how the academic success of these disabled students is affected by EDE, and the results and suggestions are also shared. For these analyses, the academic grades data of all disabled students at a foundation university before and after EDE were taken from the student information system and compared and it was evaluated whether there was a significant difference between them. This study was carried out by the members of the distance education center directorate and the disabled unit of the foundation university.

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