Open Education Students’ Perspectives of Distance Teaching of The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution

EDistance education (DE) is a kind education providing educational opportunities in some areas for people who are not able to participate in face-to-face education. The main characteristic of DE is that learners and instructors are in different places. Because of this characteristic of DE, education can be provided at any place, time and date. Therefore, the popularity of distance education programs has been increasing recently. Instructional activities can be held at predetermined times via technological tools and devices, even though instructors and students are in separate places. Besides this main characteristic, some other important characteristics of DE have been mentioned by Verduin and Clark (1994, in Agaoglu-Imer, & Kurubacak, 2002) as follows:

• Special media devices are used to connect learners and teachers and to communicate the course content.

• Special data procession and communication devices are benefited to provide two-way communication between the learners and the teachers.

• An effective educational management is established for student assessment (p. 45).

According to Kaye (1981), there are three main factors influencing the emergence of student communities attending DE activities. The first one is the demand for higher education that cannot be covered by traditional higher education institutions. In order to cover this demand, distance education approaches have been adopted in many countries. The second factor is the demand for an educated work force in some important fields. This kind of demand can only be covered in effective and cost effective ways by distance education. The third factor is the potential of distance education institutions for providing education to the people who, for a variety of reasons, did not have educational opportunities in the past.

According to Ruzgar (2004), some of the benefits of distance-learning systems used by institutions and corporations are:

• Cost effectiveness of distance education; distance education enables companies and corporations to train more people, more often, and with reduced travel costs. In addition, when distance education systems are already in place, adding new students may not increase cost at all.

• Effectiveness and productivity of distance education; through live and interactive programs/courses with multiple sites interconnected for group learning, learners can be given current knowledge and skills while they stay at their worksite.

• Quality through distance education; by using distance education technologies, access to remote experts around the country and indeed around the world can be made possible, bringing information from the original resources into the classroom. Connecting many students from different sites with instructors/experts allows the exchange of perspectives on the subjects so that new ways of looking at problems, productivity, motivation, etc. can be achieved (p. 22).

Technological infrastructure has been discussed by some researchers as the heart of the quality of distance education. For example, Ozkul (2001) emphasized the importance of the infrastructure by stating that a high-quality infrastructure of telecommunication and information technology is needed for a powerful distance education system.

As Yazici, Altas, and Demiray (2001) mentioned, different technologies for distance education have been expanding increasingly in order to make distance education a practical option for many higher education institutions. They also stated that via printed materials, television, and current interactive technologies, distance education provides a communication between student and instructor. According to Bates (1998), as an instructional tool, television has potential to give positive motivation by drawing the students’ attention. It allows instructors to reach a large mass of students simultaneously. The most unique feature of television is its capability to deliver information to the students, which is not quite possible with other devices.

According to Liu (2002), recent innovations in hardware and software technology all around the world have had positive effects on the development of distance education technology. Instructional television (ITV), web-based instruction (WBI), and web-enhanced instruction are some examples of up-to-date technologies used in distance education. Sherry (1996) also gave examples of popular distance education technologies: email, bulletin board, web pages, teleconferencing, and videoconferencing.

Subjects in The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution course exist in social science, Turkish, and life science courses under the units about Kemalism in elementary Grades 1-7. These subjects are included in the course named History of Republic of Turkey and Kemalism in Grade 8 in elementary school and Grade 3 in high school. The course The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution are given two semesters in the first grade of all the programs in universities. There exist interaction and communication between students and the instructor in the course “the principles of Ataturk and the history of revolution” taking place in face-to-face classrooms. This is a very important point, since students may have opportunities to ask questions of the instructor immediately. In addition, these students have chances to see, read, and evaluate various course materials. Therefore, it can be said that these students are luckier than are students in the Open Education Faculty.

Aims of the history of revolution should be taught to students both in distance education and in face-to-face education. According to Safran (2006, p. 103) these aims are:

• Introducing the principles of Ataturk to new generations,

• Making new generations to adopt the principles of Ataturk,

• Adapting the principles of Ataturk according to new conditions,

• Comparing the revolutions of Ataturk with modern revolutions,

• Providing power to fight against all harmful ideologies,

• Growing new generations who will form social justice,

• Providing national consciousness and conceit, and

• Informing youngsters about national history.

While Emiroglu (2006, p. 98) stated, “it can be seen that the course of History of Republic of Turkey and Kemalism and other history courses are formed around two central purposes no matter the grades in which these courses are given. These purposes are historical consciousness and citizenship consciousness,” Safran (2004, p. 112) said, “with the course of the principles of Ataturk and the history of revolution, it is aimed to make youngster[s] develop positive attitudes towards the fundamental philosophy of Turkish revolution, republic regime and the principles and revolutions of Ataturk.”

The main purpose of this study is to investigate and determine the perspectives of Open Education Faculty students’ about teaching and learning the The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution course at distance. Specifically, present study was conducted to identify types of materials students used while following the distance education course and to identify strategies and skills students developed during distance education.

The population of the study was all Open Education Faculty students residing in Adiyaman. The sample of this study consisted of 124 student volunteers who were enrolled in various distance education programs offered by Open Education Faculty.

A survey was given to the participants in order to identify the students’ perspectives. Survey was consisted of 22 Likert-type items, two items for obtaining demographic data such as age and gender, and five open ended items. Likert-type items had three categories (agree, partly agree, and disagree). Items in the survey were prepared after reviewing existing literature and distance education documents. Items were reviewed by experts. SPSS 11.0 was used for organizing the data, which were presented in frequencies. In addition, percentages were also provided by using descriptive statistics.

Of all the participated students, 61.3% were male and 38.7 % were female.

As indicated in Table 2, 45.2% of the participants were between the ages of 26–30. When considering that 19.4% of the participants were between ages of 20-25, it can be obviously said that 64.6% of all the participants were at the age of 30 or below.

As indicated in Table 3, most of the students (71%) said that they were interested in the history course.

As indicated in Table 4, 45.2% of the participants stated that they attended the Open Education Faculty for making a career and 38.7% of participants attended for obtaining promotion in their professional career.

Students were asked, “during the preparation for final examinations at what rank do you put the preparation to final exam of the course ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ in terms of importance?” Their responses were: first rank, 8 (6.4%); second rank, 11 (8.9%); third rank, 48 (38.8%); fourth rank, 36 (29%); fifth rank, 13 (10.5%); sixth rank, 4 (3.2%); seventh rank, 4 (3.2%).

During the distance education process, Open Education Faculty students stated that they mostly use printed materials (104) and other materials (75) rather than using audio (37) and video (26) materials in the course of The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution.

It can be seen in Table 5 that students participating in this study mostly used the web site of Anadolu University’s Open Education Faculty, followed by web sites of Sakarya University and Selcuk University. Twelve students did not mark any of the given web sites.

As indicated in Table 6, a majority of students agreed with the statement “During distance education I learned the subjects in the course of ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ easier”; the rate of the students who disagree with this statement is 41.9%, while 58.1%. Similarly, students agreed with the statement “During distance education I learned the subjects in the course of “the principles of Ataturk and the history of revolution” by following television programs.” In addition, 58.1% of the participants disagreed with the statement “During distance education I learned the subjects in the course of ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution” from web sites related to distance education.” Of all the students, 61.3% disagreed with the statement “During distance education I learned the subjects in the course of ‘The principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ at private tutoring centre easier,” and 81.4% of the participants stated that they learned the subjects in the course of ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution” by following textbooks during distance education.” It is seen that students learned the subjects in this course mostly from textbooks, 61.3% of the students stated that since they were well motivated in the course, they had no problems in learning the subjects in this course no matter what materials they used, and 58 % of the students stated that questions in the course exam are based on memorization. In response to the statement “During distance education I learned the subjects in the course of ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ by memorizing,” most of the students stated that they did not learn the subject in the course by memorizing.

Similarly, most of the students agree with the statement “In the text books prepared for distance education, questions related to ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of revolution” are very similar to each other,” and 64.5% of the students stated that they would like publishers to prepare CDs including subjects and questions related to the course for exam preparation. In addition, 83.9 % of the students would like the course to include more current subjects during distance education, while 41.9% of the students indicated that the course exams did not measure student knowledge properly, and 35.5% of the students also partly agreed with this statement. More than two-thirds—67.7%—of the students would like to ask questions about the course to instructors who created the questions, and 64.5% of the students believed that they would be more successful if they have taken the course in face-to-face education. While 45.2% of the students stated that they have put more effort into the The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution course, as compared to other courses, 41.9% stated that they did not put more effort into the course.

It is seen that while 38.7% of the students reached the materials about the course easily, 29% had difficulties reaching the materials. While 48.4% of the participants stated that they partly agree with the statement “I saw that the content of the course ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ was not different from the subjects that I learned in secondary and high schools,” 25.8% of the students said that they agree with the statement and 25.8% of the students said that they disagree with the same statement.

More than half—54.8%—of the students stated that they disagree with the statement “I cannot follow the course ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution’ since I have difficulties in using Internet.” However, 29% of the students stated that they cannot follow the course since they have difficulties using the Internet. While 38.7% of the students stated that they developed self study skills since they have taken the course via distance education, 32.3% of the students stated that they partly developed the self study skills. While 45.2% of the students stated that they agree with the statement “Taking the course ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution” at a distance made me use information and communication tools faster,” 35.5% partly agree with this statement. While 35.5% of the students stated that taking the course at distance did not make them develop their research skills, 35.5% of the students stated that they partly develop their research skills, and 29% stated that taking the course at distance made them develop their research skills. While 54.8% of the students stated that the course increased their general knowledge, 35.5% of the students stated that the course only partly increased their general knowledge.

This result indicated that the course ‘The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution” is playing important role on development of students’ general knowledge.

In Kaye’s study (1981), in early 1980s most students participating in distance education were between ages of 20 and 40. However, in this study, it was found that the 64.6 % of the participants were between ages of 20 and 30.

Further, the study indicated that most of the participants (83.9%) were participating in distance education programs for career purposes. Thus it can be said that these students were well motivated as they continue in their programs of study by using the opportunity to take education.

In this study, it was found that most of the students used textbooks as the only material. Although distance education, as mentioned by United States Distance Learning Association (United States Distance Learning Association, 2009), is delivered by means of various tools such as the Internet, television broadcast, and audio and video materials, most of the participants in this study did not use these resources. Saglam (1999) found that using audio and video materials provide students effective studying strategies.

Students participated in this study stated that they would like to ask questions of the instructors about the subjects and they also stated that they would be more successful if they could have taken this course via face-to-face education. As it can be seen here, in distance education, since there is no interaction between students and the instructors all the time, immediate feedback cannot be received. As Ispir (2003) stated, there is no opportunity for students to facilitate the lesson in distance education. For this reason, if the technologies used in distance education encourage interaction, students will receive feedback much quicker.

According to the results of this study, students stated that they generally;

• Could not learn The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution during distance education easily;

• Put more effort into The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution than other courses;

• Did not have difficulties to learn the subjects in The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution no matter what resources they used;

• Thought that questions in the exam of The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution needed memorization;

• Would like to see CDs including subjects and questions related to The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution for exam preparation;

• Would like the course The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution to include more current subjects during distance education;

• Would like to ask questions about the course of The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution of the instructors who created the questions; and

• Believed that taking the course The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution at distance made them use information and communication tools faster.

In addition, students participated in this study believed that they developed self study skills since they have taken the course, and taking the course at distance make them develop their research skills.

Students believed that the course exams did not measure their knowledge properly. One of the interesting findings of this study is that a relatively important portion of the participants stated that they followed the websites related to distance learning. According to student responses, the course was seen as one of the firststudied courses during the exam period.

Implications of the study include:

• The curriculum of The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution prepared for students in the Open Education Faculty should be expanded by including more current subjects.

• Web-based instruction should be more widespread and students should be informed about these technologies.

• CDs including subjects and questions related to The Principles of Ataturk and the History of Revolution and other courses for exam preparation should be created and distributed with textbooks if possible.

• Questions should be prepared as not requiring memorization of concepts and forcing students to make comments and use reasoning skills.

• Instead of a kind of history course in which students can pass the exams by memorizing, the history course that takes an effective role on growing individuals who adapt national and universal consciousness and values can produce democratic and peaceful solutions can be more effective and permanent.

• If interaction between student and instructor is not provided, learning levels of students are affected negatively. However, using the internet effectively may provide positive interaction between student and the instructor.