Description:
Quality of distance education has been improving by technological developments, experiences of educators or experts and feedbacks of learners. In order to improve the quality issues in distance education, considerations of target audiences are gaining importance to understand their considerations that might be clue for developers. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate Turkish high school students’ considerations, expectations and awareness concerning distance education, especially e-learning, and its implementations. Totally, 1224 students studying 8 different high schools from 6 cities in 4 different regions in Turkey participated to the study. Majority of the students were from computer department at Vocational High Schools. We attempted to collect data representatively in order to draw a framework about the research questions for Turkish case. Results of the study showed that students identified distance education with e-learning. Also, although students had technological competencies which are critical factors for e-learning applications, they did not prefer taking their university education with distance education program because of their habits on traditional nature of classrooms. However, they had huge tendency in terms of taking one of their courses via Internet.