Turkey 2001

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LA e- Learning Center

online in-service courses for teachers

Turkey 2001

This was presented at "Teachers Develop Teachers Research" - TDTR5 - conference at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, on September 9, 2001

Making teachers feel contented with online courses.

Our aim was to examine levels of satisfaction of English teachers (currently taking online courses or having taken such courses in the past), and determine the factors influencing them.

Very often online course designers do not get sufficient feedback on levels of satisfaction of their courses’ participants – feedback which might otherwise bring forth some improvement in the course design and delivery approaches, as well as in proper placement testing procedures.

We were especially interested in observing some connection between confidence levels of participants (i.e., to what extent they felt computer-fluent) and their satisfaction levels, in order to find out whether this connection indeed exists, and if so, what sort of relation it is – positive or negative.

Professional experience is a variable which might influence satisfaction levels: the longer this teacher has been in the field, the more experience he/she might have accumulated to make learning easier and more enjoyable.

On the other hand, those who have been working for only a few years may still have retained their learning skills; their learnability may be higher, hence their satisfaction level may be expected to be greater as well.

Such factors as age, country of birth, being a native vs. non-native speaker of English, cultural background, educational status, etc. may play a certain role in determining satisfaction levels and have to be taken into consideration when predicting satisfaction levels.

However, we found the main factors influencing satisfaction levels to be the delivery mode and the collaboration aspect. It also appears that communication with instructors and peers plays a decisive role in determining satisfaction levels of participants.

... for teachers who have noticed the advent of the new millennium