Evaluation of the public relations and publicity TWO-year degree program of Open Education Faculty and proposals for improvement

Evaluation of an educational program both provides the program's decision-makers and practitioners with detailed feedback on the components of the program and allows its learners, who are genuinely the target group of the program, to take an active role in the improvement of the program. Based on this need, this research was carried out in order to evaluate Anadolu University Open Education Faculty "Public Relations and Publicity" two-year degree program according to the opinions of the students based on the components of the program with a participant-oriented evaluation approach. A descriptive survey technique was used in this study. Using this method, personal information of the students studying in the program, their views and expectations about the elements of this program were described. The research universe was composed of students who attended the Public Relations and Advertising Program during the Spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. An online questionnaire was used to reach the students. A total of 412 students responded to the questionnaire. The data were collected through the "Evaluation Survey for Public Relations and Publicity Program" prepared by the researcher. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS (Version 20) and the results were then presented in numbers and percentages. The results showed that the participants had the highest levels of agreement with statements about the general level of satisfaction about the program and the e-learning portal. However, they had the lowest levels of agreement with statements regarding the content of the textbooks and measurement and evaluation practices. In the light of the results, some suggestions were made to improve the program like reviewing and revising some of the program components such as the textbooks and measurement and evaluation practices. Keywords: Open and Distance Learning, Program evaluation, Participant-oriented program evaluation, Open education faculty, Public relations and publicity program