Digital Inequality among University Students: Covid-19 Pandemic in Turkey
By: M. Ongun Güvenç
Tags: Covid, Turkey, Education, University, Pandemic

The issue of educational inequality is a very important subject. Education helps new generations to be logical and independent people. By embracing and improving the quality of their education, governments and other institutions aim to raise more developed individuals who can analyze different situations and take independent decisions. In 21st century, one of the major modifiers that affect the quality of this education is digital inequality.

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Covid-19, or Corona Virus Disease, is a dangerous virus that is known to be very contagious. In a very short time, with fast and easy transportation, it spread across the globe and caused a global pandemic. As the pandemic caused social distancing, most of the public places were shut, and wearing a mask became an everyday action. The situation being this serious, people living in Turkey had to take major changes in their lives as well, with social distancing and isolation.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes had to occur in the field of education. For the universities, most of the campuses are physically closed, causing their students to have online lectures. With the global pandemic and these changes, online education went from being a luxury to being an indispensable part of any student’s life. It is now a necessity for the universities to create or grow their online platforms and also trying to adjust and integrate their programs to digital, aiming to stick to their academic calendars, despite the technical difficulties on both the students and school’s end.

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“Most schools in affected areas are finding stop-gap solutions to continue teaching, but the quality of learning is heavily dependent on the level and quality of digital access.” (Gilani, 2019).

This creates a great challenge not only for the schools but also for the students. Not only because of the changing of the system but also because of the economic differences between the students and families. This causes an imbalance between the students, causing education to be less accessible for some.

The available research on digital inequality in Turkey seems to be very limited. But within the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, there seems to be enough research to give an insight on the subject.

In this respect, because in a night schools had to do a transmission from normal classes to electronic ones, the main worry educators had at first was not the quality of the education, but rather to sustain the education with the resources they have had in their hands (Carey, 2020).

There are a lot of technologies and digital tools that serve the purpose of online education. These technologies serve independently from the place and in some cases, even time. Lectures can be watched from anywhere, anytime.

The decisive indicator for the quality of these lectures is the quality of these tools and systems (Gilani, 2020).

Accessibility to these tools is very important during the pandemic when online education is a necessity. According to Deursen, as there are benefits associated with access to online tools, there are negative consequences for lacking it (2020). The students experiencing this digital inequality have a harder time accessing these tools or do not have access completely, therefore suffering from the negative consequences mentioned before.

T HE SURVEY:

The method for this research is quantitative data. A survey is conducted from two different groups as the main source.

One group, consisting of students from Koç University. A second group, consisting of students from Selçuk University, a public university in Turkey. Nearly 56% of the students who participated in the survey were from Selçuk University. The other 44% are Koç University students.

Among the participants, the age span was 19–22, with most of them being 20 years old. Even though mostly Turkish, Koç University students had different ethnicities. All of Selçuk University’s students were Turkish. Survey questions contain personal information obtained by their consent and the survey is done anonymously. While almost everyone in Koç University considered themselves as middle or upper class, students from Selçuk University seemed to be struggling with selecting a class that fits them. This might indicate some social situations.

In order to ask people to do the survey, two different internet platforms were used to ask students from the two universities. The survey includes some questions such as Their attitude towards online school, rating certain situations and their satisfaction with numbers 1–10, what devices and internet package they use to connect, also how often they encounter problems. Results also contain students’ personal opinions towards inequal digital accessibility among the university students in Turkey. We have gathered some interesting results from the survey, one of them is: Students from the public university were nearly twice more concerned about digital accessibility, and encountered a lot more technical difficulties, both from the student’s and school’s end. The students were also asked how satisfied they were with the online classes, are they were concerned about digital accessibility and if so, how much, how easy was it to attend online classes, and so on.

THE RESULTS:

The biggest problem would have been to find people for the survey but fortunately a lot of people were willing to participate, and the results were satisfying. In exact numbers 62 undergraduate students from Koç University and 79 undergraduate students from Selçuk University participated. Overall, 141 people joined the survey. The average person profile was 20 years old Turkish male, undergraduate student. Almost 67% of the participants were male students.

Participants of the survey were people who had at least decent access to the internet and some form of a digital device, and this should be thought of when analyzing the results.

We predicted that participants from the private university would have higher happiness and to be more positive overall. The results confirm this prediction (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç.

These findings show that students from Koç University were more happy and more satisfied. The biggest difference however, seems to be the accessibility of learning material. For Koç University students it was a 6,7 out of 10. For Selçuk University Students it was a surprisingly low 3,7 out of 10. Lower accessibility of learning material indicates a direct inequality in education.

“… homes often lack the equipment and connectivity that richer households take for granted, compounding the problem.” (Daniel, 2020)

For Koç University, only 2% lacked technical knowledge for digital devices. For Selçuk University, that number was around 6%. The biggest problem students encountered differed from university to university. Koç University students had connection problems as their major problem. Selçuk University students had having problems with their devices the highest, at 12% (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç

Public University students have more problems with connection but also trouble with their devices which might indicate they have lower-performing devices, causing direct inequality between students.

According to Gilani, in order to help this inequality, for the people who cannot meet the cost of sufficient digital devices and data plans, the government and corporates have to decrease costs and make digital classroom more affordable to people. Otherwise, there is a great danger and this digital division could become more extreme (2019).

As for the lack of technical knowledge, it usually requires the existing access to it, so it might be more than the lack of knowledge, but the lack of access.

“If every student is to be afforded an opportunity to develop basic technology literacy skills, the first issue that must be addressed is eliminating the inequities that exist with respect to each student’s access to the computer technology that he must learn how to use. Simply stated, if a student is to learn how to use computer technology, he must first have ready access to it.” (Morse, 2004)

Figure 3 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç

As it can be seen in Figure 3, most of the students were concerned about digital inequality which shows that there is a certain awareness, it being instinctively or mindfully, on the subject among the students.

While 71% of the participants have stated they would prefer a face-to-face education, 29% was totally okay with online education (See Figure 4). Among the 71%, the biggest reason they would prefer face to face education was social life. Most of the students were concerned about the current status of the pandemic and therefore they were in an unstable state, presumably due to lockdown and its inevitable consequences.

Figure 4 by Mehmet Ongun Güvenç

Discussion

Digital Inequality has a major consequence: digital divide. This digital divide is about the difference between those who have access to modern technology and those who do not, so lack of access. Digital inequality is more about not having the skills, equipment, or knowledge to effectively use modern technology. In this case someone has access to technology but is unable to use it because they are not familiar with how to use it, unlike those who have had access and time to acquire the skills that let them make the most of technology. The divide is very evident throughout the world. Before the Covid pandemic, Digital inequality was fast becoming a growing problem both Globally and within Turkey. This research was focused on Turkey, but to get a broader sense of the problem, other areas of the world had to be researched as well. Such as Africa, which has very low internet penetration rates compared to the rest of the world. According to ITU, the digital revolution of the 21st century is based on the internet, which is the revolution’s driving force. Without a high-speed internet connection, the citizen is excluded from today’s information society. Therefore, most of the citizens of Africa are unrightfully excluded from this modern information society. To give a better insight, these issues could be divided into two main problems. First problem is the broadband availability, which means the internet speed. Second problem is the usage of technology itself, and availability of technological devices. Turkey as a country is home to a diverse socioeconomic array of people. And economics play a large role in a student’s ability to have any internet access at all. For some students in Turkey, perhaps there is no internet access at home at all. A big portion of students have personal internet access only through their mobile phones. Students often cite slow speeds, unreliable internet connections, and lack of internet networks available. And why is that very important? Especially now? That’s because with the pandemic and the changes in education system in Turkey, online education went from being a luxury to being an indispensable part of any student’s life. Students need to have internet access to accomplish their academic goals and objectives, learn new skills, or even to graduate. This creates a newer and a much bigger problem and also division.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to understand and analyze digital inequality and digital division among university students in Turkey during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have predicted that students from private universities would have better access to classes and study material, and also be more satisfied during this online time. The findings of the survey show that this is indeed correct, and students from a public university currently have a harder time in general.

According to Daniel, the government and schools had to act fast to the spread of COVID-19, so institutions had very little time to prepare for a remote-teaching regime. (2020, p.2)

While private schools with relatively larger budgets covered up and thought of everything nice and thoroughly along the journey, public schools didn’t simply have the same opportunities. It is very hard to do an assessment or homework from a smartphone, so a computer is required for students, something not everyone has easy access to. These are definitely stressful times for students. Results of the survey show that a big majority of students are concerned about digital inequality and also not really satisfied in terms of education.

References

World Health Organisation. (2020). Coronavirus Disease. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

Gilani, I. (2020). Coronavirus pandemic reshaping global education system. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/education/coronavirus-pandemic-reshaping-global-educationsystem/1771350

Morse, T. (2004). Ensuring Equality of Educational Opportunity in the Digital Age. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124504264103

Daniel, J. (2020). Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09464-3/

Carey, K. (2020). ‘’Is everybody ready for the big migration to online college?

Actually, no.’’ The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com

ITU. (2013). Study on Internetional Internet Connectivity In Africa. http://handle.itu.int/11.1002/pub/80981022-en