Abstract:

The current study is a correlational study [4] that explores the relationship between undergraduate students’ digital literacy and distance education perceptions. Exploring the relationship between two variables in terms of students’ perspectives can provide critical insights to increase the effectiveness of distance education practices. 40 undergraduate students from the faculty of engineering in a developing university participated in the study. The students in the study switched to the distance education format as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and took their courses through synchronous and asynchronous methods. Two self-reported scales were utilized to reveal the relationship. The distance education perception scale was adopted from two studies [1, 6], and had 17 questions with a 5 point Likert scale from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”. Similarly, the digital literacy scale [5] had 17 questions with a 5 point Likert scale from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”. While the distance education perception scale has personal suitability, effectiveness, and learning subscales, the digital literacy scale has attitude, technical, cognitive, and social subscales. Since there were no violations of the assumptions [2, 3], the Pearson Correlation was run through SPSS 20. According to the results, there was a positive significant correlation between students’ digital literacy and distance education perceptions, r=.48, n=40, p<.05. Furthermore, there were positive significant correlations in terms of subscales as well. While the attitude subscale of the digital literacy scale was significantly correlated with personal suitability, effectiveness, and learning subscales of the distance education perception scale, the technical subscale of the digital literacy scale was significantly correlated only with personal suitability and learning subscales of the distance education perception scale. Besides, the cognitive and social subscales of the digital literacy scale were significantly correlated with personal suitability, effectiveness, and learning subscales of the distance education perception scale. As a result, one can conclude that as students' perception of digital literacy improves, their perceptions of distance education can improve as well. Or, as students' perception of digital literacy deteriorates, their perceptions of distance education can deteriorate too. The implications of this relationship for distance education were discussed based on the results.

References:
[1] H. Eygu and S. Karaman, “Uzaktan Eğitim Öğrencilerinin Memnuniyet Algıları Üzerine Bir Araştırma,” Kırıkkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 36-59, 2013.
[2] J. F. Hair, R. E. Anderson, R. L. Tatham, and W. C. Black, Multivariate Data Analysis. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1998.
[3] J. Pallant, SPSS Survival Manual. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2007.
[4] J. R. Fraenkel, N. E. Wallen, and H. H. Hyun, How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education. New York, NY: McGraw-Hil, 2012.
[5] N. B. Hamutoglu, O. Canan-Gungoren, G. Kaya-Uyanik, and D. Gur-Erdogan, “Dijital Okuryazarlık Ölçeği: Türkçe ’ye Uyarlama Çalışması,” Ege Egitim Dergisi, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 408-429, 2017.
[6] S. Yildirim, G. Yildirim, E. Celik, and S. Karaman, “Uzaktan Eğitim Öğrencilerinin Uzaktan Eğitime Yönelik Görüşleri: Bir Ölçek Geliştirme Çalişmasi,” Journal of Research in Education and Teaching, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 365-370, 2014.

Keywords:

Digital literacy, distance education, perception, undergraduate students, correlational study.