Views of Distance Learners With Different Learning Styles on the E-Course Designs

Abstract

In learner-centered education, it is very important to be aware of the learning styles of the learners. This allows to identify the strong and weak aspects of the learners and to improve latter. It also allows coming together the learners who are most suitable for team work and to the creation of the most suitable e-learning environments for the learners. e-Courses are one of the most important elements of the online and distance learning. The page layout, color, typography, visuals, moving images, content, functionality, the sufficiency of the navigation and browsing have very important effect on the learning of the users. The fundamental aim of this study is to identify the learning styles of the learners registered in the Distance Education Science programs and to identify their views on the e-Course designs that are used in the presentation of the course. To determine the learning styles, ` The Learning Styles Inventory' which was created by Kolb in 1984 and which was adapted to Turkish by Akkoyunlu and Askar (1993) was used. In this inventory, the learning styles are considered in four categories as accommodator, converger, diverger and assimilator. To identify the learners views about the e-Course designs " The Evaluation of the Web-Based Instruction Media Scale" which was developed by Eristi et. al. (2010). The data was analyzed by using SPSS 17 program and the percentages were calculated. At the end of the study, the learning styles of the learners and their views about the e-course design was determined. The study shows that the percentage of the learners having the four main learning styles on the basis of Kolb is very close. The study revealed that the learners have positive views about the typography, visuals, moving images, content and navigation and browsing. Although the learners have generally positive views about the functionality, page layout, and coloring, they have negative views about the some dimensions of the e-course designs which are related to the structural characteristics of the e-course designs.