Abstract:

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been a global crisis, affecting many areas of society, including education. During the pandemic, as in almost all countries, Turkey also switched from face-to-face education to online education at all educational levels. The transition from the traditional face-to-face education environment to the online education environment has brought many problems. This was also the case for deaf university students. Therefore the purpose of this study is to determine the barriers/challenges experienced in online learning during the pandemic at the School for the Handicapped (SfH)- the only school in Turkey that gives vocational higher education to hearing impaired students. The study was carried out with the qualitative case study at the SfH. The participants of the study were all from the SfH including 20 hearing-impaired students and 19 faculty members. Data obtained from Mergen Anadolu Learning Management System platform, WhatsApp Platform and other platforms used for online education. Interviews, open-ended questionnaires and researcher’s journal were compiled and analyzed inductively. Among the findings obtained in the study, the challenges experienced in the process of the online learning were the problems experienced by the faculty members and by the students. The challenges experienced in the online learning by the participants at the SfH were found to be in relation to difficulty accessing computers and software, Internet problems, lack of subtitles and sign language translation, law motivation, lack of social interaction. The findings will be discussed in the light of related literature and suggestions for future research and applications will be presented.

Keywords:

Online learning, hearing impaired, higher education, COVID-19 pandemic.