ICT-Based Distance Higher Education: A Necessity During the Era of COVID-19 Outbreak

Çaldağ, Murat Tahir; Gökalp, Ebru; Alkış, Nurcan

The COVID-19 outbreak, declared as a public health emergency of international concern in March 2020, has forced governments across the world to take action for satisfying social isolation requirements of the pandemic to decrease the spread of coronavirus. The first action higher institutions made is closing universities, suspending face-to-face classes, and switching to distance education. ICT-based distance education for higher institutions seems suitable to alleviate the COVID-19 outbreak since it does not require face-to-face communication; however, it should be planned carefully to get benefit from its advantages. One of the most challenging issues of distance higher education is choosing the appropriate technology. In this scope, this chapter aims to evaluate ICT-based distance higher education technologies, grouped under five categories: learning management systems, massive open online course platforms, platforms for video conferencing, social media platforms, and digital learning content tools. The evaluation of these technologies showed that although different platforms are used for different purposes, there is a lack of an integrated platform that supports all functionalities from a holistic perspective for improving the efficiency of distance higher education offered and supporting shifting to student-centered distance education model. To this aim, the necessities for the future are also described in this study.