Rethinking public administration education in the period of pandemic: Reflections of public administration students on online education through a SWOT analysis
Section snippets
Introduction and background
The covid-19 pandemic has been affecting the wellbeing of societies as well as education systems. It has resulted in immense crisis-response migration of universities with online learning serving as the educational platform (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020). University students’ academic life, social life, financial situation, psychological condition have been negatively affected by the pandemic. On the other hand, some positive changes in habits and attitudes were also observed like paying greater
Method
The study data were gathered from political science and public administration students at the end of the spring semester at a public university in İzmir / Turkey. The data were content analyzed. Applying the SWOT framework, the weaknesses and strengths along with threats and opportunities were identified. Later, relevant strategies were proposed.
Findings
Table 1 indicates demographic characteristics and the educational details of participants. As seen in the table, 14 out of 20 (70%) participants are female, and 17 out of 20 (85%) participants are undergraduate students. A total of 13 participants (65%) are against online education, whereas five students (25%) are supportive of it. Only two students (10%) could not prioritize any educational system.
As previously mentioned, in this study, content analysis was conducted categorizing responses in
Discussion: Revisiting the needs hierarchy and thinking beyond
The outbreak of Covid-19 has caused unprecedented changes for higher education institutions and their students. Online classes and exams, postponed semesters have impacted students’ routine. These changes also revealed the need for in-depth studies to understand how the pandemic crisis has affected students’ lives (Aristovnik, Keržic , Ravšelj, Tomaževic, & Umek, 2020). In this period, several studies analyzed the social dimension of online education, such as its role or efficiency in
Conclusions
In line with the above discussion, the conclusions of the study are as follows:
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Some earlier studies, such as Scheer (2001, p. 101), underlined the need for further research, as they failed to identify any features or constructs that could predict successful distance learners. This study, thanks to its qualitative nature and SWOT framework, underlined some characteristics. Therefore, it provided an insightful view on the antecedents of motivation with relevant seminal works. Besides, numerous
Acknowledgement
An earlier version of this article was presented at the AMEPPA -The 9th Global Conference on Public Policy and Administration in the Middle East, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies / Qatar 8–9 December 2020. The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers.
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Cited by (0)
An earlier version of this article was presented at the AMEPPA -The 9th Global Conference on Public Policy and Administration in the Middle East, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies / Qatar 8–9 December 2020.
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