The examination of the impact of institutional support for an online master program without thesis: Karadeniz Technical University sample

Nowadays, researchers and educators have conducted numerous researches regarding the necessity of technology use in education. Fortunately, they have started to apply lots of well-designed educational research of technology use by employing and developing high criteria to make our educational systems better. The goal of the current study is to investigate the impact of institutional support and structure on technology use in distance education. The current study used the quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect the data. The participants comprised the individuals who are currently enrolled in Science Institutions and are students in "Is Sagligi ve Guvenligi" graduate program in 2015-2016 at Karadeniz Technical University. The researchers also collected the data from program managers and teachers. The study used evaluation form for students and semi-structured interviews for program managers and teachers. The current study used SPSS version 22.0 to analyze the quantitative data. For qualitative data, the researcher employed descriptive data analysis method. The qualitative and quantitative research findings indicated that there are statistically significant effects of institutional support, student's business support, course content, learning, and technology support on the online master program without thesis. Accordingly, all participants heavily emphasized the importance of these themes. On the other hand, the study participants reported that the development of high educational criteria on distance education and the processing this master program have many institutional deficiencies. Together, the current study might provide opportunity and new research gates for development of better distance education programs.