An investigation on the use and e-content development status of teachers in the educational information network
There are several technological investments by Turkish Ministry of Education within the scope of ... more There are several technological investments by Turkish Ministry of Education within the scope of FATİH Project. An online learning platform called Education Information Network (EIN) was developed. Various inservice courses (IC) were held in order to support teachers to use available tools. Current descriptive study aims at describing the use and e-content development status of teachers in EIN and comparing the results in terms of various variables. 268 teachers participated in a three-dimensional questionnaire. The data were analyzed via a statistical analysis program, Jasp. Descriptive and comparative analyses were clarified and statistical outputs were compiled. EBA and e-content use and development status of teachers were revealed and differences between groups were detected. There are significant differences in the use of individual e-content, development and cooperation cases according to the branches, pre-service, and IC. E-content utilization and development status of the participants was low and that the level of individual use and assistance in the e-content usage and development processes varied in some cases according to the variables. It was concluded teachers participating in the research need to have more pre-service and IC on their own branches in the process of using and developing e-content. E-content should be developed and diversified, EIN should be easy to use for all users and there is a need for more publicity about EIN. It is suggested that the training taken before the service is diversified as content, scope and number and that IC is structured according to the branches and the frequency is increased. Keywords: educational information network, fatih project, e-content, state of utilization, state of development
Industry 4.0: Big Data Analysis-Analytics in Education İstanbul-Turkey
Industry 4.0 is a name attributed to the process of automation and data exchange in production te... more Industry 4.0 is a name attributed to the process of automation and data exchange in production technologies. It also refers to the idea of communication and collaboration in real time of the installed systems. Industry 4.0 aims to bring Information Technologies and Industry together. Industry 4.0 is actually based on the German government's strategy or policy to develop a high-tech strategy in production. This name was first announced at the 2011 Hannover Fair. My purposes in the current work are to investigate new developments actualized as a result of that idea, and clarify the relations between educational practices and Industry 4.0. Lately, big data has been turned into a significant element of education, and upcoming research and applications in the field, which was highly encouraged by the industry and research institutions, appeared. Therefore my particular focus will be on big data analysis and analytics in education and demonstrate several popular tools (such as web crawling, Zotero and Neo4j) for data collection, analysis and visualization.
Mobile Learning: Various ways of using the smart phones in lessons
Phones have already been in use for educational purposes for a long time now. Regarding some earl... more Phones have already been in use for educational purposes for a long time now. Regarding some earlier features like text messaging and voiced calls, phones were/are beneficial tools to communicate and convey any information. However, there happened some radical changes in design, capability and capacity of phones when Smart Phones by Windows and Blackberry, appeared and spread in the mid/late 2000s. The first change that introduced by iPhone introduced was the multi-touch screens, have brought a different dimension to human machine interaction (Godwin-Jones, 2017; Meyers, 2011; Prashanth, 2014). The enriched interaction through input and output relations has allowed users to reach the information in short and more effective ways. They have become popular since they make it possible high quality audio-visual materials to be accessible.
Shakespeare has been studied from many perspectives so far. However, his language style used in h... more Shakespeare has been studied from many perspectives so far. However, his language style used in his literary works is still worth studying. First of all, this study explores changing sense of emblem and emblem language comparing Shakespeare's era and today. Secondly, it puts stress on the effects of emblem traditions on Shakespeare. Lastly, this article aims to shed light on his emblematical language in his Midsummer Night's Dream, which is one of his most leading works in terms of having highly visible emblematical interpretations.
Moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems. It may create an encour... more Moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems. It may create an encouraging, informative and always renewable language education environment. It is both motivating and autonomy building in particularly English language courses. In this paper, focus of the research is to survey on Moodle's position to motivate and create autonomous e-learning in English language courses. Distinctive features of this study were that language learners who were participants of the study did not experience English preparatory class at university level and never used a particular learning management system (LMS) to learn English before. They had weekly four hours of English language classes in each term for four years of their bachelor education. The students used Moodle to learn and improve their English with asynchronous applications as an extension to face-to-face sessions of the courses. At the end of almost four months of study, averages of their exam scores and a satisfaction questionnaire were used to evaluate the effectiveness of Moodle on students' motivations and autonomous learning. As a consequence of the study, it was observed that Moodle considerably contributed to the levels of their motivation and autonomy to improve their English language skills.
The current study is a research on use of EtherPad platform for online collaborative writing task... more The current study is a research on use of EtherPad platform for online collaborative writing tasks. There are lots of reports and research dealing with these platforms, the integration of technology and its use for online educational purposes. Many of them showed that online education is very new for the learners and there is little contribution to their learning process in terms of changing their traditional educational behaviors. Furthermore, the teachers are still focusing on using technology for their own sake but there is very little attention on in-class or outclass activities since most of the time, their in-service training including appropriate technological tools, syllabus integration and consultation are disregarded. It seems that there's very little interest on synchronous collaborative online writing by the language learners with different language learning strategies. Therefore, this study investigates how the learners with different language learning strategies behave in online platforms while they are using online materials and particularly writing over EtherPad. Voluntary participants could easily integrate into online platforms and spent remarkable effort and time to cooperate and complete all given tasks and especially synchronous online collaborated writing tasks. As a result of the research, it was observed that performance of two groups of participants with different language learning strategies have significantly differentiated, which suggested that such online writing activities can be implemented to diagnose such differences among the learners and be useful to manipulate their learning process in order to assist them to improve their certain learning skills and motivate them according to their needs.
In accordance with the new advances in language teaching methodologies and integration of high te... more In accordance with the new advances in language teaching methodologies and integration of high technology tools as well as web applications, there are many scientific research published on English language teaching (ELT) and learning (ELL) in recent years. However, on the one hand, it is still a significant question to research that exactly what types of research topics are mostly studied among the researchers from different countries. What are the leading research groups on the world? Even though there are noteworthy studies to clarify mostly studied topics and trajectory of the researches on ELT by means of literature reviews, and there are very few studies to compare research tendencies of the researchers over text/content mining methodology. In fact, the papers reviewing literature are mostly limited in terms of depicting a broad understanding the scope of such studies. On the other hand, a corpus based detection methodology, which may illuminate those research tendencies and tr...
This study aims to represent the developing status of pronunciation teaching in a context of comp... more This study aims to represent the developing status of pronunciation teaching in a context of comparison and contrast, and tries to illustrate the learners' and lecturers' positions, roles and most importantly responsibilities required by today's methodology of pronunciation teaching. In this context, it is argued that pronunciation teaching methodologies have changed over decades since the Reform Movement. The exact status of teaching pronunciation appeared first in the Audio Lingual Methods and continued in the Communicative Language Teaching methods; however, the ways of teaching pronunciation has explicitly a long history and the principles of Reform Movement affects the approaches of the following teaching methods. The current approaches provided the scholars with new perspectives, and Penny Ur is one of these scholars whose ideas and principles are analysed here. Even though Ur's claims about nondeliberate teaching of pronunciation, the results gotten from the q...
In recent years there is a leading discussion about the changes in higher education system in Tur... more In recent years there is a leading discussion about the changes in higher education system in Turkey both on the media, public and among the academic staff at the universities. The Turkish government has already introduced many new universities since the early 2000s and invested on the facilities, infrastructures and university personnel. The idea behind investing on the new universities was originated in the idealism or slogan called "a university for each province". By this idealism, a large number of universities have been founded in many small cities located in rural areas. Vocational schools under body of newly born universities were also grounded in very small districts of the provinces. But it was not a simple process to establish necessary infrastructures and recruit or train academic staff with adequate experience and competences for newly born universities. The Council of Higher Education introduced a program called Faculty Member Training Program and switched on 50-D employment type, designed particularly for research assistants and based on short term contracts and precarious work. In addition Ministry for National Education initiated a program titled Selection and Placement of Students for Postgraduate Study Abroad, which is an exam for those candidates who want to take master and doctoral education abroad. The selection processes for both programs are highly centralized and questionable but the issue which is even more serious is about the number of the positions reserved for particular fields of studies. All in all, this paper will mainly focus on the processes of administration processes for employment and autonomy of Turkish universities.
The current study is a research on use of EtherPad platform for online collaborative writing task... more The current study is a research on use of EtherPad platform for online collaborative writing tasks. There are lots of reports and research dealing with these platforms, the integration of technology and its use for online educational purposes. Many of them showed that online education is very new for the learners and there is little contribution to their learning process in terms of changing their traditional educational behaviors. Furthermore, the teachers are still focusing on using technology for their own sake but there is very little attention on in-class or outclass activities since most of the time, their in-service training including appropriate technological tools, syllabus integration and consultation are disregarded. It seems that there's very little interest on synchronous collaborative online writing by the language learners with different language learning strategies. Therefore, this study investigates how the learners with different language learning strategies behave in online platforms while they are using online materials and particularly writing over EtherPad. Voluntary participants could easily integrate into online platforms and spent remarkable effort and time to cooperate and complete all given tasks and especially synchronous online collaborated writing tasks. As a result of the research, it was observed that performance of two groups of participants with different language learning strategies have significantly differentiated, which suggested that such online writing activities can be implemented to diagnose such differences among the learners and be useful to manipulate their learning process in order to assist them to improve their certain learning skills and motivate them according to their needs.
Analysing Shakespeare’s Emblem Language in Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare has been studied from many perspectives so far. However, his language style used in h... more Shakespeare has been studied from many perspectives so far. However, his language style used in his literary works is still worth studying. First of all, this study explores changing sense of emblem and emblem language comparing Shakespeare’s era and today. Secondly, it puts stress on the effects of emblem traditions on Shakespeare. Lastly, this article aims to shed light on his emblematical language in his Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is one of his most leading works in terms of having highly visible emblematical interpretations.
ABSTRACT
The current study is a review article surveying on the reasons behind minority language... more ABSTRACT
The current study is a review article surveying on the reasons behind minority languages and language losses. It hypotheses language loss is not a simple process that could be explained by changes in societies, and/but there are serious and determining periods that triggers that unintended result such as social and linguistic causes. It goes beyond the causes like financial problems, political and ecological changes and human mobilizations within years. The study clarifies that socio-cultural and linguistic reasons may play a very important role in losing a language belonging particularly to minorities. It argues that socio-cultural tolerance as well as linguistic factors will contribute a lot more to survival of minority languages than applying strict political measurements and educational regulations.
This is the first multilingual e-bulletin on Linux and open source programs, which we created tog... more This is the first multilingual e-bulletin on Linux and open source programs, which we created together with my students.
Moodle as Builder of Motivation and Autonomy in English Courses
ABSTRACT
Moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems. It may create... more ABSTRACT
Moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems. It may create an encouraging, informative and always renewable language education environment. It is both motivating and autonomy building in particularly English language courses. In this paper, focus of the research is to survey on Moodle’s position to motivate and create autonomous e-learning in English language courses. Distinctive features of this study were that language learners who were participants of the study did not experience English preparatory class at university level and never used a particular learning management system (LMS) to learn English before. They had weekly four hours of English language classes in each term for four years of their bachelor education. The students used Moodle to learn and improve their English with asynchronous applications as an extension to face-to-face sessions of the courses. At the end of almost four months of study, averages of their exam scores and a satisfaction questionnaire were used to evaluate the effectiveness of Moodle on students’ motivations and autonomous learning. As a consequence of the study, it was observed that Moodle considerably contributed to the levels of their motivation and autonomy to improve their English language skills.
KEYWORDS
Moodle, Motivation, Autonomy, e-Motivation, e-Learning
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Papers by Erdal Ayan
The current study is a review article surveying on the reasons behind minority languages and language losses. It hypotheses language loss is not a simple process that could be explained by changes in societies, and/but there are serious and determining periods that triggers that unintended result such as social and linguistic causes. It goes beyond the causes like financial problems, political and ecological changes and human mobilizations within years. The study clarifies that socio-cultural and linguistic reasons may play a very important role in losing a language belonging particularly to minorities. It argues that socio-cultural tolerance as well as linguistic factors will contribute a lot more to survival of minority languages than applying strict political measurements and educational regulations.
Moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems. It may create an encouraging, informative and always renewable language education environment. It is both motivating and autonomy building in particularly English language courses. In this paper, focus of the research is to survey on Moodle’s position to motivate and create autonomous e-learning in English language courses. Distinctive features of this study were that language learners who were participants of the study did not experience English preparatory class at university level and never used a particular learning management system (LMS) to learn English before. They had weekly four hours of English language classes in each term for four years of their bachelor education. The students used Moodle to learn and improve their English with asynchronous applications as an extension to face-to-face sessions of the courses. At the end of almost four months of study, averages of their exam scores and a satisfaction questionnaire were used to evaluate the effectiveness of Moodle on students’ motivations and autonomous learning. As a consequence of the study, it was observed that Moodle considerably contributed to the levels of their motivation and autonomy to improve their English language skills.
KEYWORDS
Moodle, Motivation, Autonomy, e-Motivation, e-Learning
Link: <http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=53555#.VOfBWvmW59Y>