Browsing by Author "Cinar, Murat"

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A Quantitative Content Analysis of Turkish State Universities' Official Websites in Terms of Their Preparedness and Actions During Emergency Distance Education in the Early Phase of the Covid-19 Pandemic Period
(Springer, 2022) Keskin, Sinan; Cinar, Murat; Demir, Omer
Most universities worldwide had to temporarily interrupt face-to-face education and start Emergency Distance Education (EDE) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It is useful to identify the difficulties and problems that universities faced in this process in order that they can carry out a similar process more efficiently in the future. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct an in vivo examination of EDE from the institutional perspective within the scope of universities during the pandemic period in Turkey. To this end, all state university websites were searched according to 27 criteria which were determined to set out the EDE readiness status of universities. The results revealed that higher education institutions had difficulty in providing sufficient pedagogical and technical guidance to academic staff due to the rapid transition. With respect to students, distance course contents, activities and announcements were not equitably accessible for students from foreign countries and those with disabilities owing to the lack of information and communications technology (ICT) tools, internet connection, translation, etc. A remarkable number of higher education institutions preferred the features of distance education tools such as cost, familiarity, stability, availability of technical support, and short preparation time rather than their pedagogical affordances.
Social Anxiety in Online Instructional Discussion Forums: the Role of Participation Styles and Ict Infrastructure
(Anadolu Univ, 2024) Cinar, Murat; Demir, Omer; Keskin, Sinan
Examination of the personal characteristics (i.e., gender, participation styles) of participants and the technical infrastructure (i.e., device type, internet connection type) of Instructional Discussion Forums (IDFs) can provide functional clues for mitigating social anxiety in these settings. In this context, this research investigated variances in learners' participation styles and social anxiety in IDFs in terms of gender and ICT availability. In addition, it explored the predictive relationships between participation styles and social anxiety. A sample of 272 freshman undergraduate students discussed various topics related to Internet ethics for three weeks through an IDF. The results indicated that participation styles differed by gender and ICT availability in several respects. First, handheld devices and cellular internet connections exerted a mediumsize effect on social anxiety. Further, "to get information" and "to fulfill requirement" purposes in the "Why" dimension of participation styles had a small predictive relationship with social anxiety, as did "analytical" and "practical" participation approaches in the "How" dimension. Of these, only the "to get information" purpose negatively predicted social anxiety. Overall, participation styles accounted for 19.1% of the variance in social anxiety. Based on the findings, future directions and practical implications are suggested for both researchers and practitioners.