Distance Education Students' Opinions on Distance Education

Introduction

The rapid developments in technology have brought about changes in social and cultural areas and gained importance for lifelong learning. Lifelong learning and education are not limited to schools but have led to the emergence of educational activities that can take place in all areas of life, at home, at work, independent of time and space. Durnalı, Orakcı and Aktan (2019) stated that “for thousands of years, education and training that manifested within a triangle of school-teacher-student has now used new, multifaceted, multi-channel alternatives with the use of technologies in the education system” (p. 228). One of the most important of these activities is distance education. Open and distance learning is one of the fastest growing fields of education and training today as a force contributing to social and economic development. Distance education has become an indispensable element for the expansion of learning and teacher education in education systems in both developed and developing countries (UNESCO, 2000). Distance learning activities, which started with a letter, were implemented in the form of television, video conferencing, asynchronous learning, web, internet based live class, live voice, application sharing. Nowadays, with the development of computer and network technologies (Internet, intranet), web, internet-based live classroom applications or interactive teaching via a teaching platform has become available. Distance education, which has started to be seen as an alternative to face-to-face education, has developed applications by adopting higher education institutions (Akdemir, 2011).

In distance education applications, the teaching and learning process has experienced major developments over the last decade (Simonson, 2012). While these developments in distance education have been experienced, different definitions of distance education have been put forward. Distance education is the education given by using media tools remotely (Koper, 2014). Distance education is an institution-based formal education in which educational resources and tutorials are brought together by using telecommunication tools of learners in different places (Schlosser, & Simonson, 2009). Lee (2017), on the other hand, described distance education as bringing together students and teachers in separate spaces by using media. With the rapid development of technology and internet, definitions such as online education, e-learning and co-education have emerged (Moore, Dickson-Deane, & Galyen, 2011). While some academics can use online education and e-learning interchangeably, others define them according to the technologies used to provide education. In other words, while some scientists define e-learning as training on the Internet in addition to other electronic media such as CDROM, satellite and television, online training is defined only as training on the Internet or published on the internet (Lee, 2017; Moore et al., 2011). Online education / e-learning, which is used interchangeably, is often described as a unifying bridge between teachers and students using web-based technologies (Lee, 2017; Moore et al., 2011). Although the concepts of online and distance education are defined separately, these concepts are intertwined today. There is no standard on how much technology should be used to define education as distance education or online education. It is now described in the literature as teaching using instructor and technology-directed instruction (Alammary, Sheard, & Carbone, 2014).