High School Students’ Attitudes towards Distance Education: Comparative Study

Abstract

By the rapidly evolving technologies, alternative training methods used on training needs of individuals instead of classical training methods. With the growing popularity of distance education opportunities, students’ attitudes towards distance education is rapidly changing. The purpose of this study was determine to changes of attitudes of high school students in 2010 and 2014 towards distance education. To achieve this study “Distance Learning Attitude Scale” (DLAS) and “Personal Information Form” (PIF) developed by Celik (2011) utilized. Mentioned measuring tools applied to 92 in 2010 and 99 in 2014 high school students. DLAS has two sub-dimensions on distance education which are positive and negative attitudes. The reliability of these subscales were examined by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. Positive sub-dimension attitude toward distance learning Cronbach's Alpha coefficient calculated as α=0.91 for 2010 and α=0.92 for 2014 and negative sub-dimension attitude toward distance learning Cronbach's Alpha coefficient calculated as α=0.75 for 2010 and α=0.79 for 2014. Participant student's gender, socio-economic levels and internet usage time determined by PIF. İnternet usage time of students grouped by less than 1 hour, 1-3hours and more than 3hours. ANOVA used on SPSS 20 software to analyze if student's gender, socio-economic level and internet usage time have significant impact on positive and negative attitudes. Homogeneity of variances analyzed by Levene F test. Each test examined separately for the 2010 and 2014 data. As a result of the analysis, no significant difference (p<0.05) of student's gender on distance education attitudes detected. The time spent on the Internet in 2010 has a significant difference (p=0.04) on positive attitude but no significant difference on negative attitude. No significant difference for the time spent on Internet for both attitude scales. Socio-economic status of students has a significant difference (p=0.02) on positive attitude for the year 2010 but no significant difference for the year 2014. Additionally no change detected on distance learning attitudes of students in comparison between the year 2010 and 2014.