An investigation of the effect of an authentic distance learning system on learning in terms of various variables

This research aims to determine the effects of students' academic achievement, attitudes towards the course and their skills to make historical empathy and their views with an authentic distance learning system created with the authentic learning strategy of the 8th grade Unit "A National Epic: Either Independence or Death!" is included in the T.R. History of Revolution and Kemalism course. It has been used an application by the name of Seyyah developed by İneç (2012) with ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) instructional design model in order that it has been created an authentic distance learning environment. Seyyah has been improved for this study and predisposed to the authentic learning strategy. Within this scope, the national struggle period to be presented has been designed considering scenario-based and evidence-based learning. The scenarios built has been transformed into multimedia elements through fictions using evidence and placed on the icons on the dynamic map of Seyyah. In this way, Seyyah has been turned into a geo-media application. The study is considered important because it is the first time that a distance learning system with an authentic learning strategy is implemented and has an experimental process that is not affected by the pandemic process. Along with these, there is no study in which the authentic learning strategy is used in the 8th grade T.R. History of Revolution and Kemalism course. In this research, embedded mixed design which was designed with mixed-method by using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods together was employed. A quasi-experimental model was used to adopt quantitative data. Accordingly, a public school located in the city center of Erzincan was determined by simple random sampling and the study groups were randomly assigned. There were 24 students in the control group and 30 students in the experimental group. In the experimental process that was carried out during the pandemic period, accessing to the Seyyah application was enabled through the internet. Experimental group students were registered to the Seyyah and logged into the system with the unique username and password given to them. To determine the academic success of the students in the experimental and control groups, The T.R. History of Revolution and Kemalism Course Academic Achievement Test developed by Altıkulaç (2014), to determine their attitudes towards the course, the Attitude Scale towards the T.R. History of Revolution and Kemalism Course developed by Yeşiltaş & Yılmazer (2015), and to measure their ability to empathize with history, The Historical Empathy Scale developed by Çalışkan & Demir (2019) was converted into an online format and applied. The data obtained from the scales were analyzed with the independent groups t-test using the SPSS v.25 program. In the study, which had been designed as a basic qualitative research, six semi-structured questions were asked to the experimental group students. When the students' views on the process were evaluated with content analysis,their skills of the attitudes and empathy were evaluated with descriptive analysis. The academic achievement, attitudes towards the lesson and the ability to make historical empathy of the experimental group students showed a significant difference compared to the control group students according to the results obtained from the quantitative dimension of this study. The results obtained from the qualitative data reveal that the experimental group students would rather the application of "Seyyah" than the traditional distance education tools such as EBA, and they liked this application and found it useful, fun, practical and fast. In addition to this, it is understood that they want the application to be applied in other courses and units.