Design and Development of the

E-Learning Services in the Open Education System

in Turkey Assistant Prof. Dr. M. Emin Mutlu

Inst. Özlem Özöğüt ErortaInst. Ruşen Yılmaz

EADTU- Working Conference 2005Towards Lisbon 2010: “Collaboration for Innovative Content in Lifelong Open and Flexible

Learning”Rome, 10-11 November 2005

Anadolu University Open Education System

Anadolu University Open Education Faculty, possessing the Economics and Business Administration programs, was established in 1982 to perform distance education in Turkey.

The demand for the open education faculty where 29,000 students were registered in the first year has gradually increased and it has become a gigantic institution having around 1,000,000 enrolled students and where more than 200,000 students are registered every year.

Anadolu University Open Education System

In 1993, distance education expanded and separated into three faculties as Faculty of Business Administration, Faculty of Economics, and Open Education Faculty, and it was named as Anadolu University Open Education System. Open Education West Europe Programs were developed in1997 in order to provide distance education services to the Turkish citizens in the West European countries and its head office was established in Cologne.

Anadolu University is a dual-mode university.

Anadolu University Open Education System

Units designing, developing and producing the distance education materials are composed of the book design unit where the printed materials are designed and developed, radio-television production center where the TV programs are designed and developed, test research unit where the exam questions are prepared, the computer based education unit which is responsible for the design, development and publishing of the instructional software.

The basic instructional services at Anadolu University Open Education System can be stated in three groups as student office services provided by the head office and its affiliates, academic facilitator services organized by the academic facilitation coordinatorship, and face-to-face examination services organized by the computer research and application center.

Distance Learning Services in the Open Education

System

Anadolu University is in Eskişehir which is located in the central part of Turkey. Its more than one million students are living in various cities of Turkey having 81 cities. Students enrolled in the Open Education system can use the office services, academic facilitator services and exam services in their home without leaving from their home.

Office ServicesOffices responsible for the student affaires have been established in the Anadolu University Open Education system in order to allow students enrolled in Business Administration, Economics and Open Education Faculties to perform their affairs without going to the center. As of 2005, 88 offices in 80 cities and in Lefkoşa (Nicosia ) and Cologne serve to the Open Education Faculty students. More than 400 people work in the head office and the offices in the cities.

Face-to-face Academic Facilitator Services Academic facilitator service is one of the most important elements of the Open Education System. The basic aim of this service which is supported by many universities in Turkey is to get the instructors specialized in their subject areas and students together, and promote interaction to encourage better learning.

Academic facilitator services are given in evenings or at week ends by more than 600 instructors in the university campuses in 67 centers where university rectorships exist.

Examination Services Open education faculty exams are held on the same dates and in the same hours in the whole country. Anadolu University Computer Research and Application Center (CRAC) is responsible for the execution of the examinations without any problem. The examinations are conducted three times a year using more than 5,000 buildings and more than 50,000 rooms each time. More than 250,000 people are charged in every examination period.

Development of the Distance Learning Materials in the Open Education System

The coursebooks, TV programs, exam questions and the instructional software that will be delivered to the students enrolled in the Anadolu University Open Education System are developed in the units of the university specialized for these purposes.

Development of the Course Books

The course books are prepared in the way to allow self-study, and they are pressed using the most up-to-date instructional technology methods and providing the basis for the Internet and TV programs, and then distributed to the students.

The number of books which were redesigned and pressed in the Anadolu University Distance Education system has exceeded 500. Around 5 million books are delivered to the students every year. More than 1,000 subject area professors write and edit the books.

Production of the TV Programs

All the radio and TV programs are developed in the Open Education Faculty Radio and Television Production Center and they are broadcast in the national TRT channels (only the exam preparation programs are live broadcast ). Nearly 200 experienced, specialized and trained personnel work in the production center.

Production of the TV Programs

Nearly 5,000 TV programs have been developed since the establishment of the Open Education Faculty. The TV programs are broadcast 24 weeks per year, 37 hours per week, and 888 hours per year. The programs are broadcast at least twice in a year.

The radio programs are broadcast in TRT Radio 1. The number of the broadcast radio programs is 400.

Development of the Exam Questions

The questions asked in the Open Education exams are prepared by the Test Research Unit. Every year, for each course, the subject specialists are asked to prepare questions. Those questions are scientifically checked by another subject area specialist after being technically controlled. When the scientific editing of the questions is complete, they are edited by the subject writer and they get approval for printing. All the questions to be asked in the exam are assessed and evaluated scientifically. It is through this process that more than 20,000 questions are asked to students in the examinations without any error.

Production of the Instructional SoftwareThe Computer Based Education Unit (CBEU) was found in 1989 in the Anadolu University Open Education Faculty to investigate and apply the educational opportunities that stem from the developments in the computer technology and widely use of the computers. The design and publishing of the all practices and the maintenance of the published courses and the services provided are achieved by the CBEU.

Production of the Instructional Software Twenty-five specialists work full time in the CBEU as instructional designers, graphic artists and animation specialists. Moreover, 25 students from different majors at the Anadolu University work half time in the CBEU to perform jobs in relation to voicing, graphics, animations and scenario development. More than 250 teaching personnel working in different departments at the Anadolu University provides support in the instructional software design and development process as subject area specialists, editor, instructional designer, vocalization and animation specialists.

Transformation of the Traditional Open Education Services and Materials into

the E-Learning Services

The learning efforts of the every student getting instruction via the open education method in our country should be supported by technology as much as possible without leaving them on their own for studying. For this reason, the traditional products and services of the Open Education Faculty are designed and developed parallel to the developments in the Internet technology so as to be published in the Internet.

A period where the instructional content is gradually digitized has started in the Open Education system since 1999. The course books, television programs, academic facilitator services, exam questions, office services, computer aided instructional software are transformed into products and services in the virtual environment such as e-book, e-television, e-facilitator service, e-exam, office-web, and e-practice respectively.

e-Book

The electronic book service was put into practice in the 2003-2004 academic year so that students have the chance to read them in the Internet environment when they have not got the books yet. The electronic books were delivered in PDF format in the mentioned academic year but they were transformed into Flash Paper technology in the 2004-2005 academic year so that students not having the PDF reader could access them.

The name of the electronic book application has become e-book when all the e-learning services have been combined in the e-Learning Portal.

e-Book

The units in the PDF format coming from the Index Service, which is a sub-unit of the Book Design Unit, are transferred into Flash Paper and added into the e-book section of the course in the e-Learning portal. 2,178 units for 173 courses are delivered via the Internet environment.

http://eogrenme.anadolu.edu.trhttp://eogrenme.aof.edu.tr

e-Television

E- Television is a service that gives the students the opportunity to record the TV programs of the open education system courses in their computers and watch them more than once.

The delivery of the television programs in the Internet was started in the 2003-2004 academic year. This practice made much more sense when developments in the fast Internet access occurred in Turkey in 2004.

e-TelevisionMore then 600 programs belonging to 70 courses are delivered in the e-television which is in the Open Education e-Learning portal.

Each program lasts around 20 minutes.

http://eogrenme.anadolu.edu.trhttp://eogrenme.aof.edu.tr

e-Practice The main instructional material in the Open Education programs is the coursebook. The students are responsible for the information in the books for the examinations. Students need software that can reinforce what they have learned from the books, increase their problem solving skills and prepare them for the exams more effectively.

e-Practice The preparation of the Internet based practice software involves two processes as design and production. Half of the total project period is used for design and the other half is used for production. The contribution of many experts is needed in every step of the design and production services.

http://eogrenme.anadolu.edu.trhttp://eogrenme.aof.edu.tr

In the 2005-2006 academic year, 758 unit practice software for 50 courses are presented to the students in the Open Education e-Learning Portal.

e-Exam

In the Open Education System, internet-based trial exams exist so that students can prepare themselves for the exams and see their real performance before the real exams. This practice started in 1999 and was named as ‘e-exam’ in the open education e-learning portal.

For the e-exam practice, the CBEU cooperates with the Test Research Unit. In the e-exam practice, more than 11,000 questions for 123 courses are placed in the question bank and they are updated every year. The practice receiving the highest demand in the e-learning portal is the e-exam.

e-ExamThe examinations involve questions randomly selected from the question bank, and the time period for the exam also appears on the screen which is exactly the same time period given in the real exams. Students can pass to the evaluation section when they finish the exam in the given period. The correct answers of the questions do not appear in the evaluation part, but the number of questions answered by the students, the number of correctly answered questions and the students’ performance for the units are listed.

http://eogrenme.anadolu.edu.trhttp://eogrenme.aof.edu.tr

e- Facilitator Service

The e-practice software that is published in the Open Education e-Learning Portal has an asynchronous academic facilitator service.

The facilitator service was started as a pilot project for 24 courses that have practice software in May of 2005.

Each course has an academic facilitator and a moderator.

Students send their questions by accessing the lists of the units in the e-facilitator link and then they send their question after choosing the related unit from the unit list. If their question involves a formula, they send their question after placing them in a file.

e- Facilitator ServiceA student can access to the questions asked by the other students and the answers given by the facilitators. The academic facilitator service is performed by the course editors.

http://eogrenme.anadolu.edu.trhttp://eogrenme.aof.edu.tr

This practice which was started for 24 courses will continue for 50 courses in the 2005-2006 academic year.

Office-Web Service

The services used by the open education students via the open education offices can be accessed by them via the Internet. Using the Office-Web service provided by the Computer Research and Application Center, students can learn their exam results, see their transcripts, learn the books they need to buy from the offices, and make changes in their examination center and identity information.

Publishing of the e-Learning Services

The Open Education e-Learning Portal is published from the CBEU server center. Every year, information about the enrolled open education students is loaded to the open education e-learning portal database and students are given the chance to access the e-learning services just after the registration using their Turkish Republic identity number. The contents and services in the Open Education e-learning portal are published via three servers having 32 operators. TTNET, which is a national Internet network, is used in order to publish via the Internet lines having bands of 34 Mbps. The lines of ULAKNET, which is the National Academic Internet Network of the university and having 70 Mbps are also used for this purpose.

Publishing of the e-Learning Services

A technical support team is on duty in order to make the Open Education e-learning Portal available for 24 hours, to maintain it and back it up, and respond to students’ technical support demands that come from them via e-mail or telephone.

Today, 15% of the students enrolled in the open education use the e-learning services regularly, and this ratio increases every year. The studies conducted so far indicates that the final grades of the students who used the e-learning services are 19% higher than the ones who did not use them.

Conclusion Rapid changes in the Internet technologies has

promoted the creation of new opportunities in the field of distance education, and has allowed the professors to give instruction taking students’ individual differences in their learning styles and capabilities into consideration.

Redesigning the traditional elements of the Open Education System in the Internet environment and the practice software that allow the students to reinforce what they have learned enhance the quality and efficiency of the learning environment presented to the students.

In order to provide the students with these services, an organizational structure was created that allow the cooperation of the Computer Based Education Unit and the other units to digitize and publish the products and services of the units producing instructional content in traditional environments.

For your questions

oozogut@anadolu.edu.tr