Distance Education Students' Attitudes Towards Distance Education and Their Epistemological Beliefs

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine attitudes towards distance education of distance education' students and their epistemological beliefs in terms of the variables of gender, department and investigate the relationship between the variables of attitude and epistemological belief. The current study, used the correlational survey model, was conducted with 330 students enrolled in distance education' some departments in a university located west of the Black Sea region in Turkey. The Scale of Attitude Towards Distance Education and Epistemological Beliefs Scale were used for data collection in this study. Multivariate Variance Analysis (MANOVA), Correlation and Multiple Regression Analysis were also used for data analysis. At the end of the study, significant difference was found between the attitudes towards distance education between students' and both the variables of gender and departments. Although statistically significant was found difference between epistemological beliefs and the variable of departmant, there were no differences between epistemological beliefs and the variable of gender. Moreover, it was determined that statistically significant a relationship was found between the attitudes towards distance education of students' and both their beliefs on that learning was based on efforts and that teaching was based on skills.