My research interests include instructional message design concerned with presenting and structuring information to promote learning; integration of technology into education as cognitive tools to engage students in critical thinking, problem solving, and higher order thinking, use of technology to facilitate and develop metacognitive skills; human performance technology that focuses on techniques, procedures, and approaches to determine and solve human performance problems at organizational level.
I have involved number of research projects in accordance with my field of expertise. I have carried out various research projects in the past ranging from integration of technology into teaching and teacher education to instructional material development and evaluation. In this process, I employed both qualitative and quantitative research to assess these activities, and the findings revealed essential information in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of these activities. One of the recent research projects I have been working on is a three-year research project funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). The research project is about developing an online educational program to be used by school counselors in Turkey before, after and during a disaster due to the earthquakes, technological or mining accidents, economic crisis, terror or migrations. My role in the project as a researcher is guiding and monitoring the instructional design and online education system design and development processes.
Another research project that I completed recently was funded by TUBITAK, and I was the project coordinator. The purpose of the research was to incorporate emotional design principles into instructional multimedia materials, and to explore students' levels of experienced positive emotion, mental effort and academic achievement (recall and transfer). In this context, based on the various emotional design approaches that have been used frequently in the literature, we created four different instructional multimedia materials in science subject for middle school students, and compared them in regard to above mentioned constructs.
As the project coordinator, I completed another research project that was also funded by TUBITAK. The purpose of this study was to develop Web based and mobile platforms that help visually impaired (VI) people learn accurate writing and spelling of English vocabulary without a need, and enrich their opportunities to learn by providing accessible learning environment. In order to reach the most accurate results and the most effective solution, design-based research approach was used, and three iterative cycles were implemented in the study. As the results of the study, we also suggested some instructional design consideration for VI learners.
In addition to the research projects, I conduct research studies with my Ph.D. students. One of the research study I advice is about investigating the effects and roles of different question types on higher levels of thinking, shared metacognition (self-regulation and co-regulation); cognitive, social, teaching presence of students in the framework of an asynchronous community of inquiry. Another research study is related with Human Performance Technology field. The purpose of that study is to identify the performance deficiencies of the faculty in distance education and to create performance models for online faculty.
These are some of my recent research activities, and the details can be found in this website.
Mental health specialists have important responsibilities in the preparation process before a disaster and in the prevention works after a disaster so that the societies and individuals having been directly or indirectly exposed to disasters do not experience short-term and long-term difficulties. However, the number of people capable of implementing a psychosocial intervention after a disaster is quite limited in our country. The immediate need for training these people become obvious when individuals who have been or would be exposed to disasters and traumas due to the earthquakes, technological or mining accidents, economic crisis, terror or migrations because of the wars on our borderlines are considered. To address this need, developing an online educational program to be implemented immediate after and during a disaster for the counselors is planned on a) how counselors work with the children and the adolescents, the parents, the teachers, the people with disabilities b) how they do self-care on themselves.
The purpose of this study is to develop a platform (Speaking Eyes) which will help vocabulary learning of the blind or visually impaired people in order to provide solutions to the problems they face. This platform will be accessed through web and mobile modes. Speaking Eyes to be developed will enable the blind people to learn the true writings and spellings of the words without the need of anyone else. At the same time there will be a game part in the platform which will also provide to have fun while learning the vocabularies and move forward based on their levels. With the help of the platform it will become possible for blind people to have equal opportunities with their sighted counterparts and thus blind people have chance to learn the vocabularies without memorizing based on their readings. When the development process of the platform has been completed, platform will be accessed freely.
The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of incorporating emotional design principles into multimedia learning on the students' levels of experienced emotion and their academic achievement (near transfer and far transfer).The moderator effects of individual differences in predicting experienced total emotion and academic achievement will also be explored in the study. For this aim, two conditions will be formed: control group (neutral design) and experimental group (emotional design). Individuals in the experimental group will study with a learning material which will be designed based on the principles of emotional design. For example, psychology of the colors, personification of the lifeless objects, shapes and forms will be used for the learning material which will be designed for this group. For the control group, black and white simple line drawings (schematic representations) without depth will be used.
Bu araştırmanın amacı, Ortaöğretim 9. 10. 11. ve 12. sınıflarında verilen Tarih derslerinde "Dijital Hikayeleme" yönteminin kullanımının benimsenmesinde etkili olan etkenler ile bu yöntemin kullanımını kolaylaştıran ve zorlaştıran etkenleri ortaya çıkarmak ve incelemektir.
Bu araştırmanın amacı Bilgisayar ve Öğretim Teknolojileri Eğitimi (BÖTE) programlarında yer alan 'Bilgisayar Donanımı' dersi kapsamında öğrencilere uygulama olanağı sağlamak amacıyla mobil teknolojilerde çalışacak benzetim ortamları geliştirmek ve 'Mobil Destekli Kesintisiz Öğrenme' ortamı sunarak bu ortamın etkinliğini Bilişsel Yük Kuramı ve öğrenme çıktıları açısından incelemektir.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of principles aiming to reduce extraneous cognitive load in learning from goal based scenario designed multimedia learning environment for learners having different working memory capacities. In addition, the effects of goal based scenario and the principles of cognitive load theory on students' perception, motivation and satisfaction has been explored.
Bu bağlamda bu araştırmanın amacı: BOTE bölümleri mezunlarının öğretmenlik meslekleri ile ilgili algılarını; mesleklerini etkin bir şekilde yapabilmeleri için kendilerine okul yönetimi tarafından sağlanan destek ile ilgili algılarını; BÖTE bölümlerinin programlarına ilişkin görüşlerini incelemektir. Ek olarak okul yöneticilerinin ve öğretmenlerin BOTE bölümleri mezunlarından beklentilerini, araştırmaktır.
Bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinin sunduğu olanaklardan etkin bir şekilde yararlanmak amacıyla Indiana Üniversitesi tarafından öğretmenlerin hizmet içi ve hizmet öncesi mesleki gelişimlerinde teknolojiyi etkin kullanmayı öğrenmelerini sağlamak amacıyla web-tabanlı bir sistem tasarlanmış ve geliştirilmiştir. Geliştirilen bu sistem öğretmen adaylarının gerçek yaşamdaki konular üzerinde çalışmalarını sağlamak; sınıf ortamında kullanabilecekleri öğrenci merkezli araştırmaya dayalı dersleri geliştirmeleri için öğretmen adaylarına rehberlik sağlamak; öğrencilerin araştırmalarında teknolojiyi araç olarak kullanabilmeleri için strateji sağlamak; öğretmen adaylarının yeteneğe dayalı değerlendirme geliştirmelerini sağlamaktır. Bu araştırmanın amacı bu sistemin öğretmen adayları tarafından öğretmenlik mesleğinde bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerini etkin olarak kullanmayı öğrenmeleri amacıyla araştırma tabanlı proje ve materyal geliştirmelerini sağlamak ve öğretmen adaylarının teknoloji inançları ve yeterlilikleri ile çalışma süresince sistemde izledikleri yol ve etkileşimleri arasında ilişki olup olmadığını araştırmaktır.