This study reports on the experiences of an instructor and an undergraduate class who used blogs in their teaching and learning environment at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey. Qualitative data were collected from observation of students' activities when working on blogs in the classroom, analyses of students' blog documents on the web, and interviews with 42 students. Most students reflected that blogs are user friendly and convenient tools for publishing and sharing studies. Moreover, blog implementations contributed positively to students' information searching and writing skills, despite the limited opportunities that many students had for Internet access outside the university. However, students' ignorance regarding copyright issues and their tendency to copy information from online sources and paste it into their blogs was a common problem.
The main purpose of the study is to investigate Turkish undergraduate students' perceptions of the Web as a learning tool and to analyze whether their perceptions differ significantly based on gender, socio-economic background, and Web experience. Data obtained from 722 undergraduate students (331 males and 391 females) were used in the analyses. The findings indicated significant differences based on gender, socio-economic background, and Web experience. The students from higher socio-economic backgrounds indicated significantly higher attitude scores on the self-efficacy subscale of the Web attitude scale. Similarly, the male students indicated significantly higher scores on the self-efficacy subscale than the females. Also, the students with higher Web experience in terms of usage frequency indicated higher scores on all subscales (i.e., self-efficacy, affective, usefulness, Web-based learning). Moreover, the two-way ANOVA results indicated that the student's PC ownership has significant main effects on their Web attitudes and on the usefulness, self-efficacy, and affective subscales.
The purpose of this study was to investigate differences and similarities among United States (US) and Turkish university students in technology ownership, uses of technology for academic purposes, perceived importance of technology, and preferences for technology in education. The EDUCAUSE Center for Analytics and Research (ECAR) undergraduate student technology survey was used to collect data from Turkish students (N=384) at Abant Izzet Baysal University and US students (N=399) at Louisiana State University (LSU). The findings revealed significant differences in uses and ownership of most technological devices in favor of the US students in comparison to the Turkish students. The results of the study pointed to differences in information technology (IT) ownership and access, largely as a function of local infrastructure and economic settings rather than cultural diversities between Turkey and the US.
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