Turk, Umut2021-11-272021-11-272021https //doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2021-SI07https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12573/1041The author acknowledges the grant of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey-TUBITAK-project number: 120K273The 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.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessTurkeycity-effectsmultilevel modelsdistance educationarticleVolume 12 Page 149-169 Special Issue SI