From Editor

Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE July 2012 ISSN 1302-6488 Volume: 13 Number: 3 from EditorDear TOJDE Readers,Welcome to the Volume 13 Number: 3 of TOJDE! In this issue, 2 Notes for Editor and 26 articles of 51 authors from 14 different countries around the world have been published. These published articles are from, Algeria, Australia, Bengaldesh, Greece, India, Iran, Malaysia, Mariutius, Nigeria, Oman, Spain, Turkey, USA and Zimbabwe.First all, you should know that if a submission picks up from 3 TOJDE editors between 4.5 and 9 over all 9 credits, it means that this submission can be published in TOJDE in the coming issues. However, since the publishing priority of the accepted papers belongs to the highest scored ones, submissions which receive a score between 4.5 and 5 or 6 should wait and be archived for publishing later on. TOJDE administration respected this publishing rule up to now. Therefore, some accepted submissions which obtained over 4.5 have not been published yet up to now. These submissions were waiting for publishing in TOJDE in the future. In this issue, we decided to give them a chance to be published. For this reason, the current issue includes more papers than the previous issues. The 1st Notes for editor arrived from USA and written by Steve McCREA on Transforming Teachers, Transforming Schools: Turning "Sages" Into "Guides on The Side". He mentioned that teachers, educational managers and learners must realize that new opportunities are offered by modern communication. When a teacher becomes a "guide on the side," there is a change in the school's culture that can be measured. This presentation is extracted from a newly published book, Let's Lecture Less, edited by Steve McCrea (Visualandactive.com) and Mario Joel Llorente Leyva. The 2nd notes for editor is titled as “Challenges Encountered By A Distance Learning Organisation” which is written by Dr. Sangeeta MALIK, from Education, Humanities and Social Sciences Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning, Pune, Maharashtra, India. This study explores; the rapid growth of the adult learner population is increasing the demand of distance learning techniques. The demographic study of the learners will help target the adult learner population and proper training will help organizations to develop course materials and techniques appropriately.The first article is from Australia titled as “Developing A Framework For” written by Dr Mahesh JOSHI, RMIT University, Victoria and Alperhan BABACAN from Swinburne University, Australia. The aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss the importance of infusing blogs as a formative assessment tool in university education. After describing the theoretical aims, design, implementation and evaluation of blogging as a formative assessment tool; the paper supports the argument for the educational use and pedagogical importance of blogging.The second article is titled as “Exploiting ICT and E-Learning In Teacher’s Professional Development in Algeria: The Case of English Secondary School Teachers”, written by Boutkhil GUEMIDE and Chellali BENACHAIBA, from University of Bechar, Algeria. This paper explains why e-learning is a crucial factor in teacher development and outlines how both ICTs and E-learning can help English secondary school teachers’ professional development in Algeria through the creation of an effective e-learning web-site.The 3rd article is titled as “A Model for Beliefs, Tool Acceptance Levels and Web Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Science and Technology Preservice Teachers Towards Web Based Instruction”. Written by Mehmet Barıs HORZUM and Ozlem CANAN GUNGOREN, from Sakarya University, TURKEY. The aim of this study is to examine this relation. In accordance with this aim, the study group of the study is consisted of 363 pre-service teachers. The data collected from pre-service teachers under the research were collected with scales of belief, tools acceptance and WPCK towards WBI. As a result of the research, behavioral and contextual beliefs in WBI beliefs were medium level. The 4th article from Turkey, Anadolu Univesity. Suzan DUYGU ERIŞTI has written on A Multi-Cultural Interaction Through Video Conferencing In Primary Schools. Her study investigated Turkish and Canadian primary school students’ ways of expressing their perception of cultural understanding through video conferencing and that of cultural interaction through video conferencing. Most of the students indicated that videoconferencing encouraged them to learn and understand about different cultures, helped them develop cultural awareness, attracted their attention and increased their motivation.The 5th article is join(bu kelimeden emin değilim joint olabilir!) study from Bengaldesh and India. It is titled as “Teaching English Through Open Non-Formal Education (Onfe) in Bangladesh With An Effective Integration of ICT To Support Learning”, written by Mizanoor RAHMAN, Bengaldesh and Santosh PANDA from India. They analyzed the program which is entitled “English in Action (EIA)”, 9 year period DFID funded project in Bangladesh, was launched in 2008, for the desire to bring a change in the learning of English language. EIA works to reach a total of 25 million primary and secondary students and adult learners through communicative language learning techniques and the use of ICT, textbooks and supplementary materials in an innovative way. The 6th article is experienced as PhD research and summarized for TOJDE by Serpil KOCDAR and Cengiz Hakan AYDIN from Anadolu University Faculty of Open Education, TURKEY, conducted on “Accreditation of Open And Distance Learning: A Framework for Turkey”. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for the accreditation of higher open and distance learning (ODL) programs in Turkey. The 7th article is from Spain and entitled as “Critical Reading of Research Articles As Oral Activator In The Language Class”, written by Veronica VIVANCO, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain. Her paper reports on an experience carried out with second course students of the School of Aeronautical Engineers the Polytechnic University of Madrid in the subject class Modern Technical Language. The students have experienced an evident improvement in the speed of the discourse since the interest for the subject matter has made them lose their inhibitions in the participation in the oral activities; it has also noticed that a better intonation which has become richer and more lively when compared to the monotonous tone they had before the critical reading experience. But, apart from these linguistic factors, we believe that the exposition of their critical ideas has developed both their humanism and their scientific mind.Next and 8th article is titled as “Comparison of Novice Programmers’ Performances: Blended Versus Face-To-Face” and written by Unal CAKIROGLU, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. In his study, he investigated the effect of blended learning on novices’ understandings of the introductory programming. A quasi-experimental design with participants of preservice computer and instructional technologies teachers, one control group (CG, N=64) and one experimental group (EG, N=61) who received the course 11 weeks. While face-to-face courses were taught face-to-face in classroom and in lab, blended courses were conducted in synchronous and asynchronous settings and also in lab sessions. The pretest, posttest and delayed tests were used to collect data. The participants in two groups were separated into three categories (poor, average and good) according to the pretest results. The results of the study showed that blended and face-to-face courses have statistically similar effects on academic achievements among the three categories. The 9th article titled as “An Investigation Into The Attitude of College Teachers Towards E-­ Learning in Purulia District Of West Bengal, India” and written by Dr. Santosh Kumar BEHERA, Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, India. In the present study, the investigator made an attempt to study the attitude of college teachers towards E-learning in Purulia district of West Bengal. One hundred teachers (both male and female) teaching in Arts and Science streams were taken as representative sample of the whole population. An attitude scale was used for collecting the data. The means of both groups were tested for significance of difference by using ‘t’ test. The differences in the groups were statistically significant and the attitude of College teachers was more favourable towards E-learning.The 10th article is “Developing Conceptual Framework For Revising Self-Learning Materials (SLMS) of The Open School (OS) of Bangladesh Open University (BOU) At A Digital Environment”, written by Sabina YEASMIN, Bangladesh Open University and CRK MURTHY, Professor of Distance Education, STRIDE, IGNOU, INDIA. This study collects data from tutors, distance educators, writers and reviewers and finally develops a framework for revising the OS SLMs at a digital environment for Ministerial project entitled Teaching Quality Improvement (TQI) partnering with the BOU School of Education with new texts.The 11th one is “Challenges of Attending E-Learning Studies in Nigeria” from Nigeria, written by Stephan Z. BUGI, National Open University of Nigeria. This study set out to find out what challenges the E-leaner faces in the Nigerian environment. Survey research design was used to obtain the opinion of 200 randomly selected E-learners in Kaduna metropolis. Their responses revealed that the most prominent challenges they face are, Inadequate Power supply, Internet connectivity problems, Efficacy of service providers, Affordability of computer hardware, Software and other accessories, Depth of knowledge and skills of internet operation, Cost of accessing Internet and production of hard copy. Of all these problems, power supply and its inadequacy ranked highest while depth Internet knowle

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.