The investigation of usefulness of web-based systems developed for school experience and teaching practice course

In this research, it is aimed to reveal the usefulness and impact of Web-Based School Experience System (WBSES) which is developed to increase the effectiveness and functionality of school experience and teaching practice courses in teacher education programs. The Web-Based System is developed with .NET technology. The Study participants, consist of 96 4th grade students which studying in Fırat University, Faculty of Education, Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department and taking the course of Teaching Practice and 13 ICT teachers which working in various schools in Elazığ. To gather the views of participants, non-experimental screening methods are used at the end of a certain period of use of software which is developed. In this method, qualitative and quantitative data collection steps are performed simultaneously. While the quantitative data were obtained by using Web Based School Experience System (WBSES) Usability Scale, which is consist of 32 questions developed by the researcher and Cronbach alpha value of .96. The qualitative data were obtained by five open-ended questions. As the students were asked to, five open-ended questions were asked to the participant teachers about WBSES usefulness. As a result of research, most of the participants are defined the system as a handy software. In-service students have stated that the system contributes to teaching of the lesson of teaching practice course. But overall, for a more useful system, they want the system to contain more links and errors of the system corrected. When asked most admired features of the system with open-ended questions, most of the students answered that adding homework, adding videos and online support always ready to answer. In addition, as the most unpopular feature in the system, students emphasized the problems encountered in the file upload system. The other components of the system, teachers said that the system is very comprehensible and visual design of the system is very well but they were complained that some of the links doesn't work properly. Key words: School Experience, Pre-school, Teaching Practice, Web 2.0, Web- Based School Applications, usefulness.