Examining the instructors’ perspectives on undergraduate distance learning music instrument education during the COVID-19 pandemic

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COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an emergency transition to distance education in Turkey as well as other countries in the world; and as in all levels and fields of education, the distance education model has been widely used in undergraduate level music instrument education. This practice has brought certain issues that are required to be addressed to and problems to be solved in instrument education. The main purpose of this study was to determine the perspectives of the instructors regarding the undergraduate instrument lessons conducted with distance education during the pandemic. For this purpose, survey model was adopted with the participation of a total of 201 lecturers. The data was collected using a questionnaire composed of 26 items developed by the researchers. The results revealed that the majority of the instructors had no prior distance education experience, and that those who wanted to employ both synchronous and asynchronous methods together constituted up the majority of the instructors. It was also discovered that the most common issues were connected to internet infrastructure, instrument access, student motivation, and socialization. Furthermore, it is recognized that most of the time, remedies to these issues could not be provided. It was discovered that the majority of instructors thought distance instrument education was a disadvantage. However, when the shift in teachers' perspectives on distance education was evaluated before and after the pandemic, it was reported that positive attitudes toward distance education improved when compared to attitudes prior to the epidemic. Some suggestions were made to increase the quality of distance instrument education.