Abstract
We live in a period when schools are involuntarily closed; human life gradually slowed down and came to a halt due to a pandemic, but distance education is already underway. While some higher education institutions have been struggling to meet distance education, the ones that have currently provided distance education in many parts of the world continued to maintain their existing educational systems in the time of the pandemic. In this connection, the central objective of this paper is to explore how online solutions and attempts have been defined under the term of “emergency remote education” since the first outbreak of the pandemic and how pandemic pedagogy during COVID-19 has contributed to emergency remote education and online education both in the world and specifically in Turkey. As there has been a gradual shift in higher education lately, this chapter is a response to educational crisis specifically for English teaching and learning at a distance from a positive perspective.
TopEducation In The Time Of Covid-19
In an unclear time-frame, the world dealing with the Covid-19 epidemic is experiencing difficulties in all areas such as health, economy and education. In this epidemic that turned all humanity into a single asset, many educational institutions across the world have been struggling and trying to find options to deal with this uncertain period of education (Dhawan, 2020). Turkey, like in many countries across the world went into a lockdown in late March, and started experiencing of learning that is transitioned to an online delivery mode. As in other countries of the world, this sudden transition and the difficulty of adapting to it have become a common problem. In this regard, stronger sense of shared empathy and unity could be a response to the world’s fragile situation (Allen et al., 2020).
The unexpected COVID-19 outbreak was first recognized in late December, 2019, and later was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020). When recent history of Covid-19 is analyzed, it is observed that education has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic with 1.725 billion university-level learners and more than 200 countries and territories around the world (Dietrich et al., 2020). In this connection, distance education has opened a new era of transition from theory to practice within a pandemic pedagogy. Thus, in the midst of this stormy period, the perspective on education has been changed within a new paradigm (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020) that also created a “new normal” for distance education. Understanding its importance in previous years but not being fully integrated into the higher education system, distance education has undoubtedly become the lifeblood of higher education with Covid-19.
Educational institutions, which had no idea how to act with the first shock of Covid-19 and were reluctant to change but later made a rapid transition to distance education as time passed. Although this quick transition caused confusions at the very beginning of Covid-19, online educational attempts have been made to designate urgent measures needed to save students and faculty members. After the formation of the moderate milieus, the catastrophe has turned into an advantage and that was the lucrative side of eLearning and teaching (Dhawan, 2020) and eventually replaced by a new concept called Emergency Remote Education (ERE).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Canvas (Mergen): Learning Management System of Anadolu University which contains assignments, materials and necessary links related to the distance education courses.
Pandemic Pedagogy: The pedagogy that cover themes related to online education conducted under pandemic conditions.
Microsoft OneDrive: Internet-based storage platform.
Emergency Remote Education (ERE): Emergent educational attempt that is given to students during time of Covid-19. This education practice is an obligation rather than an option.
Digital Language Learning: Teaching and learning a foreign language in digitalized milieus.
COVID-19: The disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus that has spread worldwide, and also called as pandemic by World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020.
Online Learning: Online learning defines the courses presented through the internet. It also called as Computerized Electronic Learning or Internet Learning.