The role of the universities has been changing enormously during the last century. Traditionally, universities are bound to teaching and research activities. Teaching includes discussing and transferring existing theories, research, and knowledge. On the other hand, research refers to developing new information and understanding. In modern society, the role of the universities is starting to be questioned within the 21st century (Barnett, 2008, 2010; Collini, 2012; Sperlinger, McLellan & Pettigrew, 2018). As a result of this debate, a new term emerged as a responsibility of universities to contribute to societal and economic development (Laredo, 2007; Zomer & Benneworth, 2011).

While the number of Covid-19 cases is increasing day by day, higher education institutes in almost every country, including Turkey, have started to obtain a distance learning approach. This transition required a new perspective on higher education itself (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020). There was a significant migration from face-to-face learning to online learning methods because of the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020. UNESCO (2020) reported that 1 576, 021, 818 learners in 188 countries were affected by this migration to online learning at all levels. While the universities start online education, ambiguity arose about what to teach and how to teach. Furthermore, there is a considerable gap growing about education equity with online education (Zhang, Wang, Yang & Wang, 2020). Thus, it affected 99 percent of the students worldwide (UNESCO, 2020). 

In the 21st century, there has been more online training, seminars, and workshops carried out, and these activities require planning, audiovisual contents, and teacher-student preparation for the online process (Bao, 2020). On the other hand, most of the academics were unprepared for the online teaching process because of the sudden outbreak. They lacked the online teaching experience and support from the technology teams. In the first place, Turkey announced a break for three weeks in March and hoped to be prepared for the virus in this break (YÖK, 2020). On the other hand, since the pandemic was growing, education and training activities were held online. Therefore, this process should be considered an emergency remote education rather than distance learning (Bozkurt, 2020).

Although online education has become a necessary action and has enormous benefits to maintain learning by preserving physical distance during a pandemic, it gives rise to significant difficulties and shortcomings about the effectiveness of education. Inadequate infrastructure, lack of technological devices because of socio-economic status, difficulties about technological competence of instructors, inappropriate curriculum and assessment tools for online systems are disadvantages of distance learning (Dumford and Miller, 2018; Owusu-Fordjour, Koomson and  Hanson, 2020). Students couldn’t reach the online classes and stated their situations to their universities. Most of the universities, such as Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University in Turkey, started to run campaigns for students who did not have access to the internet and a personal computer.

This outbreak influences every area of our life certainly. Furthermore, this process requires a reassessment of higher education tools and activities. This study aimed to learn the experiences of the academics who are currently giving lectures and running a laboratory during the outbreak. In addition, it is intended to get information about the personal experiences of the academic to come to know the effects of personal experiences on their professional life as well. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with the academicians following this purpose.

In this study, the snowball sampling technique is used to reach academics who are actively a part of the online education process. Eight academics from different universities are conducted semi-structured interviews about personal experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Six participants are females, and only two participants are male academics. Five participants are above the 31-year-old, and they have at least six-year experience in their profession. On the other hand, three participants are below the 30-year-old, and their year of experience is at most five years. Four participants are working as research assistants in their universities. In addition, the other four participants earned their Ph.D. degrees, and they are working as assistant professors at their universities. Interview protocol is developed for semi-structured interviews with academics by the researchers referring to four areas: (1) Demographic information of the participants, (2) Academic situation and the applications during the Covid-19 pandemic, (3) Personal experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, and (4) Suggestions to universities for the online education process. This research is designed as a qualitative phenomenological study since the aim of the research is to understand the individual experiences of academics in depth. The qualitative content analysis is used to reveal the unique details of the data (Zhang & Wildemyth, 2005). The qualitative content analysis is used to reveal the unique details of the data rather than finding out the statistical significance of the particular words or concepts. Therefore, relevant themes and codes are used to understand social reality (Zhang & Wildemyth, 2005). Pre-established themes and codes are not used since the aim of the study are to enable the in-depth clarification of the phenomena (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2016). Word-to-word transcription of the interviews is done for the reliable analysis of the data. The triangulation process is done by one academic from Marmara University to ensure the trustworthiness and transferability of the data (Creswell, 1998). Suggested themes and codes are taken into consideration by the researchers, and the data is coded as a result of the consensus.

Four themes emerged from the analysis of these interviews: competencies, transition, interaction, and influencing factors. The first theme referred to competencies related to the academics’ perceptions of adequacy about online teaching methods. Participants highlighted two aspects of the competency of the online education process: technological competency and academic competency. The second theme is transition related to the transition stage of the universities from face-to-face education to online courses. The third theme, named interaction, is related to the communication facilities of academics during online lectures in both their personal and professional life. Thus, this theme has two codes as professional issues and personal issues. Influencing factors is the fourth theme that emerged as a result of the analysis. It includes the issues that affect academics during the pandemic and affect their online lectures. This theme is referred to as the personal and professional factors that influence online courses. The significant issue arising from the results is gender inequality in academia during the pandemic. From the beginning of the pandemic, the research number of male academics increases as female researchers’ studies drop (Ribarovska, Hutchinson, Pittman, Pariante & Spencer, 2020). Another professional influencing factor that creates a challenge since working online creates a heavy workload for participants. Universities' role is changing in the 21st century from research to adaptation to social and economic changes in society (Laredo, 2007; Zomer & Benneworth, 2011). The task of the education system is to create a suitable environment for all students to learn and teach them to live in a diverse society (Black-Hawking, 2010). Therefore, online education should have an inclusive and adopt Education for All (EFA) perspective.

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