Date

2012

Author

Uzun, Erman

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The main purpose of the study was to design, develop, deliver and evaluate a new distance web design course for the needs of students in a vocational higher education institution. Proactive action research was used as a framework during the research process. This research focused on the analysis of the existing face-to-face course to mitigate its problems in the new design. Then, accomplishments and insufficiencies of the new design in the new context were investigated. For this study, data were collected in two different semesters, in a vocational higher education institution. In the first semester, an existing course was investigated to see the problems and the needs. The results revealed that there were problems associated with “motivational”, “interactional”, “instructional activities”, “support materials”, “up-to-date content”, “technologic”, and “non-technologic” aspects of the existing course. Before the delivery of the new distance course in the second semester, it was completely redesigned with the new characteristics to mitigate some of the predetermined problems of the existing course. In this new structure, an instructor from Ankara gave the course via smart class to this vocational institution located in another city. In the second semester, data were collected to understand what the accomplishments of the new course, and what aspects of the new course needed to be modified. To triangulate qualitative findings, two questionnaire were conducted to see the students’ attitude towards web-based instruction and students’ perceptions about learning environment. With the findings of these data collection procedures, the accomplishments of the new design can be categorized in five main headings. These are “working with an experienced instructor”, “extended learning opportunities”, “increased future expectations of students”, “fulfilled software requirements”, and “applicability of a distance vocational course”. On the other hand, in the new structure of the course, new problems emerged such as “course delivery problems” and “students’ readiness”, because technology use in education sometimes comes with its unique problems including the solutions. Those accomplishments and insufficiencies points of the new design would be helpful in the new distance course design projects.

Subject Keywords

Vocational education., Distance education., Web-based instruction., Computer-assisted instruction.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615320/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/22251

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis