The investigation of the effects of virtual tours applications in social studies teaching

The general objective of this study is to investigate the effects of usage of virtual tour activities in Social Science education on academic success, motivation and attitude toward Social Science lecture of students. Beside it is aimed to investigate the views of students regarding to usage of virtual tours in Social Science lectures. To obtain the data necessary of this study, the unit of the journey to Turkish history achievement test developed by the researcher, 'Social Science lecture motivation scale' developed by Kan (2012), 'Social Science lecture attitude scale' developed by Demir and Akengin (2010) have been used. In order to determine the views of students on the usage of virtual tours in Social Science lecture, semi structured focus group interview form developed by the researcher has been used. After gathering necessary data, they have been analyzed via pocket software. Parametric tests have been used for the data showing normal distribution. The content analysis has been performed for the qualitative data. When analyzed the effects of usage of virtual tours in Social Science lecture on academic success, motivation and attitude of students, results show that before experimental process there has been not any significant difference between experiment and control group students. However, at the end of the experimental process there has been a significant difference in favor of experiment group of students. Qualitative results indicate that the usage of virtual tours in Social Science lecture have many benefits and contribution to both each individual and attitudes toward the lecture. The results of qualitative analysis also demonstrates that there has been some problems to apply virtual tours such as internet and infrastructure problems, extended period of time for using virtual tours and problems regarding to students who are not capable of using technological devices. Keywords: Social studies, virtual tours, motivation, attitude