Determination of Preschool Teacher Candidates' Views on the Learning Management System Used in the COVID-19 Pandemic Process

Introduction

The Covid-19 outbreak spread rapidly, starting from Wuhan, China, first throughout China and then all over the world. The process is still continuing, after it was classified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 (WHO, 2020). The rapid transmission of this pandemic from person to person revealed the necessity of people not to have physical contact, and this situation has brought the concepts of social distance and social isolation to the literature. With these measures, it is aimed to ensure that people interact without physical contact and to control the pandemic (Vallance, 2020). Most governments around the world have launched a joint initiative to curb the spread of this highly contagious disease by imposing lockdown, social / physical distance, face-to-face education withdrawal, and immigration restrictions (Gonzalez et al.2020).

The Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the ongoing actions and habits related to social life in many countries. Educational organizations were one of the institutions most affected by this process (Atasoy, Özden & Kara, 2020). Interrupting the education process, which continues in a planned and regular system, more than foreseen affects the education process negativelyInterrupting face-to-face education due to reasons such as earthquakes, pandemics, terrorism and social events makes planning educational activities extremely important. In such suddenly developing situations, producing alternative methods to educational activities will enable education to continue where it left off (Bayburtlu, 2020). When the literature is examined, it is seen that one of the first interventions to manage the current situation in previous pandemics is the closure of schools (Hens et al., 2009). In this pandemic, like the previous pandemics, schools have been suspended in many countries (Sahu, 2020; Viner et al., 2020). Along with this pandemic, the largest social experiment in the history of the world took place naturally with about 1.6 billion students (Zimmerman, 2020).

In its report on the closures of face-to-face educational institutions, UNESCO announced that on April 4, 2020, at least 91.3% of students in the world did not attend school, and the highest percentage was reached. Within the scope of this study, as shown in Figure 1, according to the latest data obtained on December 24, 2020, 205 million students were affected by the restrictions in their countries (UNESCO, 2020).

Figure 1.

Global monitoring of school closures caused by covid-19

(UNESCO, 2020)

Various measures have been sought to minimize the negative effects of the unpredictable Covid-19 pandemic on educational activities. At this point, distance education emerges as a method that has been brought to the agenda during the pandemic process and started to be applied intensively (Karakuş et al., 2020). Well-planned online distance learning experiences are significantly different from online lessons offered in the event of a crisis or disaster (Hodges, et al., 2020).

With the closure of the schools, unlike planned distance education activities, emergency remote teaching processes were put into practice in order to ensure the continuity of education. While the concept of “remote” emphasizes physical distance, the concept of “distance” emphasizes physical, interactional and psychological distance. Emergency remote teaching tries to produce temporary solutions for the needs. It is described as an effort to sustain education with the means available in times of crisis (Bond, 2020; Bozkurt et al., 2020). Due to the sudden and urgent transition experienced during the pandemic process, it was not possible for both educational institutions, students and educators to make preparations (Turan & Gürol, 2020).

After the first cases in Turkey, were suspended for a short time teaching in all universities. Later, it was decided by the Higher Education Council (YÖK) that education at universities would continue with the distance education method. The development of distance education system in Turkey is based on a very old history. Universities have tried to adapt quickly to this process, which started with the pandemic (Karadağ & Yucel, 2020; Serçemeli & Kurnaz, 2020).