Turk, Umut2025-09-252025-09-2520212068-651X2068-6633https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2021-SI07https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12573/3104Turk, Umut/0000-0002-8440-7048The COVID-19 outbreak has forced countries to take extensive measures aimed at minimizing human contact. In this crisis period, distance education has played a crucial role in ensuring continuous learning. However, not all locations have had the same maturity level regarding infrastructure availability, and the city-level heterogeneity in socioeconomic structures might have impeded equal access to distance education. This paper focuses on the contextual dimension of distance education by a comparative approach between in person and distance education outcomes in Turkey. By a multilevel modelling approach, student outcomes are examined against a set of student-level and city-level determinants of academic success during the COVID-19 period compared to the same academic semester in the previous year. The findings support previous studies, discussing the long-term contextual effects on student outcomes and show that the digital divide between the rural and urban areas and income inequality are the main drivers of city-level variation in students' success during the pandemic.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessDistance EducationMultilevel ModelsCity-EffectsTurkeyArticle10.47743/ejes-2021-SI072-s2.0-85114252303