Evaluation of the effectiveness of teaching-learning process of online courses (Anadolu University example)

The rapid developments on the information and communication technologies have also affected the education area deeply and made including various new applications into the teaching-learning processes and the environments education occured possible and necessary. One of these applications is conducting teaching-learning processes on the computer and internet based virtual environments. On the each level of education, especially on higher education, the examples of the online education which teachinglearning processes are applied on virtual environments are becoming widespread. In a lot of units of Anadolu University, online education applications are given the importance and focus. Indeed, in the fall semester of 2005-2006 academic year, more then twenty courses were given as online courses. Although Anadolu University provide students and faculty members with technological opportunities necessary for effective online courses, it is not known whether effective teching-learning process occurs or not on the online courses. Due to this reason, to use the technolojical opportunities that university gives effectively, it is an crucial necessity to evaluate the effectiveness of online courses and to realize the parts that should be developed. In the research based on this necessity, evaluation of teaching-learning process of the online courses having effective instruction elements or not having according to the opinions of students and faculty members was aimed. The research was conducted on 150 students who attent the online courses in the fall semester of 2005-2006 academic year and 17 faculty members who applied these courses. The researh is a descriptive model and the opinions of the students and faculty members were collected through a questionnaire. The questionnaire has three parts. On the first part of the questionnaire, the program and the course that the students attent and the course that faculty members conducted were asked. At the second part, there are 71 items to define the opinions of the students and the faculty members about the evaluation of teaching-learning processes of the online courses. At the last part, there are two open-ended questions for taking the students and faculty members opinions, problems and advices about the teaching-learning processes and the technical subjects of the online courses. SPSS computer program was used to analyze the data obtained from the research. In the analysis of the data, percentage and frequency were used as statistical techniques. The research results indicate, according to the findings derived from the answers of the students and the faculty members, the online courses conducted in the fall semester of 2005-2006 academic year in the Anadolu University, the preinstructional activities and content presentation principles necessary for effective teching-learning processes were applied in the courses at high percent. On the other hand, the applications for providing students participation and interactivity were not efficient and reinforcing, feedback and corrective feedback activities were applied in the middle level. In the online courses, among the issues providing technical sufficiency, the appropriate internet technologies, applications and educational web sites design principles were applied at high percent. However, technical aids were not efficient.