Evaluation of the main course program at a preparatory class of higher education in terms of students' and instructors' opinions

"Program Evaluation" is the indispensable element of teaching process. The same educational program may result in different outcomes because of the effects caused by the educational environment, the type of students exposed to the program and educational practices. Hence, it is inevitable for institutes to conduct program evaluation. This study has been carried out at Dokuz Eylul University, School of Foreign Languages in order to reveal the deficient and sufficient parts of the existing Main Course program. Students enrolled and instructors working at preparatory school during 2017-2018 academic year participated in the study. The sample consists of 139 A level students, 158 B level students and 26 C level students and 60 instructors. In the study, a student and an instructor questionnaire based on Bloom's model of evaluation is used as the data collection tool. The questionnaires have four parts; objectives, content, teaching-learning processes and assessment which are the main parts of a program. After the questionnaires were prepared, some experts from the field were asked to analyze the items. According to their suggestions, necessary editing was done. To check reliability, Cronbach's Alpha was calculated, and the questionnaires were carried out at the end of the second term. The findings reveal that the program meet students' need in terms of objectives in general. The students find the objectives of speaking skills insufficient the most while the instructors think that the objectives of writing classes are insufficient the most in the program. In addition, it is found out that the instructors are satisfied with the input while the students do not like the input a lot. The data related to teaching process show that, compared to the students, the instructors have more positive attitude towards teaching process. Assessment is another issue the students' ideas differ from the instructors'. The students partially agree that the assessment procedures are beneficial while the instructors find the assessment procedures beneficial in general. Finally, the differences between A, B and C levels are examined to find out whether these differences are statistically significant. The results show that the students at A level are satisfied the most with the program. At the end of the study, it is suggested that the program should include more interesting topics and classes related to the departments, and the effectiveness of the speaking clubs should be increased.