COVID-19 has brought dramatic changes into the ways our day-to-day activities are carried out in recent times. Education was also affected. Online education was adopted as means to administer teaching and learning. There are numerous online video conference platforms currently available to assist in education. Nevertheless, with these platforms are various features with their inherent advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the suitable ones to meet the need of users could be a daunting task. This study utilized a comparative research method to compare features; maximum participants meeting recording duration, security, chat/screen sharing, meeting duration, archive meeting, trial versions, account creation to use and mobility, of seven online video conference platforms; Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, Cisco WebEx Meetings, Zoom Meetings, ClickMeetings and BigBlueButton. This study would aid learners, instructors and educational institutions to choose from the numerus platforms, to suit the specific needs and usage during this pandemic period and beyond.   Keywords: Online video conference platform, online classrooms, online video conference platform, e-learning, Covid-19

The general purpose of this research is to determine the readiness of the mechanical engineering programme candidates for distance education. The quantitative research method was used in the study. The research was carried out in the spring term of 2020–2021. The working group consists of mechanical engineering students studying at universities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Russian Federation. 460 volunteer university students participated in the study. In order to improve their readiness in the research, a 4-week online training was given to the mechanical engineer programme candidates. The ‘readiness for distance education’ measurement tool, which was developed by the researchers and was prepared by calculating the reliability coefficient, was applied to the university students. The measurement tool was simplified by consulting experts in the field. Data were collected by an online questionnaire and a hand-held questionnaire. The collected data were analysed using the SPSS programme. Frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values were used to analyse the data obtained from the measurement tool. According to the results of the research, it was concluded that the university students’ readiness for distance education showed positive results and they did not have any problems while using the distance education system in their classes.

The use of technology in education has increased rapidly in recent years, and one of these is coding training. Rapid changes have been observed in coding education in recent years. Many countries have added coding-related lessons to their curricula. There are studies about coding education that realise the learning of individuals at a very young age. This rapid change raises many questions for researchers. In this rapidly developing age, the views of prospective teacher candidates on coding are very important. With this study, it is aimed to discover the thoughts of prospective teachers of the Computer and Instructional Technologies Education department on coding education. For this purpose, qualitative data were obtained from 25 pre-service Computer and Instructional Technologies Education teacher candidates with case study method in Northern Cypriot, Russian and Kazakhstani universities. Selections were made based on volunteering among the pre-service teachers who took coding lessons. In this study, the data were collected with the semi-structured interview technique, which was developed considering the purpose of the research. Qualitative content analysis was used in the analysis of the data obtained. The results obtained in the research process revealed that the needs of pre-service teachers regarding the coding education were lacking and the number of coding courses should be increased.