Yasemin Gulbahar

Ankara University · Department of Informatics

The demand to incorporate informatics into primary education is seen as a critical necessity both today, and for the future of modern societies. Numerous countries are currently revising their primary education curricula in order to incorporate informatics concepts and computational thinking skills. Although many successful initiatives have been im...

The ability to interact or engage with the instructor, other students, and the content i.e., to experience online student engagement, is one main difference between traditional and digital media employed in teaching and learning processes. As literature on this topic in the Turkish context has proliferated, to date, virtually no systematic reviews...

Computational Thinking is part of the new curriculum in many countries and this new competence is often combined with Algebraic Thinking. Both types of thinking are part of the core of Mathematics and Computer Science. Algebraic Thinking is linked to acquiring the ability to represent and generalize patterns in any application area. Furthermore, th...

This study aims to examine the impact of interdisciplinary computational thinking (CT) skills training on primary school teachers’ perceptions of CT skills. The sample of the study consisted of 30 primary school teachers in Istanbul. In this study, where quantitative and qualitative methods were used together, qualitative data were obtained from th...

Computational thinking is a relatively new field for teachers and educational researchers, where new pedagogical approaches emerge to teach various aspects of computational thinking that covers various thinking abilities and techniques for solving problems. Computational thinking concept received great attention from researchers and instructors wit...

In online learning, autonomy is one of the significant factors for academic success, and learners’ being aware of her/his skills can have effect on academic performance. Hence, the purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale for the evaluation of learner autonomy in online learning environments. An item pool was gener...

One of the most researched domains of computing education research (CER) that attracts attention is computing education in schools, starting from pre-primary level up to upper secondary level (K-12). A high number of initiatives and related research contributions have appeared over half a century of computing history in schools. This chapter presen...

Due to rapid advancement in technology, massive changes have occurred in the educational context. Hence, educational institutions need to reshape their roles and responsibilities according to the new and innovative instructional technologies and approaches for meeting the goals of the digital era by building a digital teaching-learning culture. At...

CT for Language, Arts and Humanities Prospective Teachers: Specific Features, Approaches and Practical Solutions

Scientific research shows that the role of teachers is crucial in the integration of informatics at all educational stages. Besides some other barriers, teachers’ lack of knowledge of informatics is believed to be a reason why educators are reluctant to get involved in informatics teaching. Hence, this study focused on the factors influencing prima...

Computational thinking is important for everyone and focuses on solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior through fundamental concepts of computer science. Early years are important for young students to learn coding, and at the same time, they can improve problem solving and computational thinking skills. Coding can be...

This study aims to determine indicators that affect students' final performance in an online learning environment using predictive learning analytics in an ICT course and Turkey context. The study takes place within a large state university in an online computer literacy course (14 weeks in one semester) delivered to freshmen students (n = 1209). T...

There is a vast amount of data collected on e-learning platforms that can provide insight and guidance to both learners and educators. However, this data is rarely used for evaluation and understanding the learning process. Hence, to fill this gap in the literature this study explored the effect of online course design on students’ transfer and ret...

This chapter aims to provide a general description of the preferred pedagogical approaches for the delivery and practice of computer science education based on a review of the literature. Pedagogical approaches mainly used in the teaching of computer science are unplugged activities, robotics programming, block-based or initial programming environm...

This study aims to provide a deeper understanding about the Bebras tasks, which is one of the computational thinking (CT) unplugged activities, in terms of age level, task category, and CT skills. Explanatory sequential mixed method was adopted in the study in order to collect data according to the research questions. The participants of the study...

The computer science (CS) unplugged approach intends to teach CS concepts and computational thinking skills without employing any digital tools. The current study conducted a systematic literature review to analyze research studies that conducted investigations related to implementations of CS unplugged activities. A systematic review procedure was...

The purpose of the current study is to examine published studies in computer science education in a systematic way, and to present a history of the research and new research trends in this area. This research study reports the findings of the systematic literature review according to the educational relevant areas dimension of the Darmstadt Model....

Introduction: Programming can be an intellectually satisfying skill, and is definitely considered useful. However, problem-solving with a computer involves much more than just learning programming language syntax. The theory and practice are interrelated in fascinating ways. Whether one thinks that the purpose of college or higher education is to p...

During '90s, a debate initiated between Clark and Kozma about the role of media on learning. While Clark proposed that the media had no effect on learning, Kozma proposed that learning is influenced when method and media is combined and appropriately used. In today's world, the role of social media on learning is inevitable since social media is in...

The journal of “Informatics in Education” has decided to start publishing of Special Issues once a year. This is a reward to guest editors, who have extended the cooperation and relationship with authors, and this way have augmented the visibility of discussed academic topics in the academic research community. The first special issue is devoted to...

Over the past several years, online learning has become an extremely popular research topic. Nevertheless, there continues to be a need for a holistic approach when examining online learning. To examine issues related to online learning as well as the effects caused to online learners; researchers in this study developed and tested a model that emp...

Since e-Learning has become popular in recent years, research studies have been conducted about which instructional methods are the most effective in online learning environments. The purpose of this study is to apply the flipped classroom model to a Medical Terminology Course that was provided fully online as part of a Medical Documentation and Se...

Computational Thinking (CT) has recently been addressed as one of the key skills for the twenty-first century. Integrating CT into different subject areas of K-12 education is also now widely accepted to improve the quality of instruction. In that sense, it is important to enable educators and researchers to recognize how to integrate computational...

With faculty members and instructors struggling with the massive transformational challenges stemming from technological innovation, the establishment of a digital teaching-learning culture to ensure that university graduates are ready to join the 21st-century workforce is of the utmost importance. At this juncture, the key players are those who le...

Due to rapid advancement in technology, massive changes have occurred in the educational context. Hence, educational institutions need to reshape their roles and responsibilities according to the new and innovative instructional technologies and approaches for meeting the goals of the digital era by building a digital teaching-learning culture. At...

The new digital learning culture requires teachers to evolve with a learner-centred mindset and to become digital teaching designers, mentors, facilitators, and evaluators who effectively integrate technology into the educational context. Moreover, the digital learning culture has also led to a change in the roles of teachers as digital classroom m...

In this study, effectiveness of a computer science course at the secondary school level is investigated through a holistic approach addressing the dimensions of instructional content design, development, implementation and evaluation framed according to ADDIE instructional design model where evaluation part constituted the research process for the...

Son yıllarda bilgisayar bilimi alanında teknolojiye paralel olarak yaşanan gelişmeler, problemlerin bilgisayarlar yardımı ile çözülmesine verilen önemin artmasına neden olmuştur. Bilgi işlemsel düşünme (computational thinking) olarak tanımlanan bu becerinin kazandırılmasının önemi ile birlikte bu becerinin kazanılıp kazanılmadığının ortaya konması...

It is important today to prepare pre-service teachers to integrate social media tools into their lessons and to teach them how to use social media as a learning environment for educational context. Based on this, an undergraduate course was designed to fulfil this need. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the behaviours and perceptio...

The purpose of study is to revise the existing curriculum of "Information and Communication Technologies and Software" course, which covers the subjects related with computing and technology use and make students prepared for the future, in order to graduate students donated with necessary knowledge and skills by continuous improvement. During this...

The computer science discipline is evolving with problems in both technological and pedagogical aspects almost worldwide. With the advent of new technologies and approaches for teaching programming at all ages, many countries including Turkey have revised their computer science curriculum. These revisions have resulted in serious training needs bei...

The influence of social media has been most significant in the way that it has transformed our lives and daily practices, especially the younger generation. Social media usage represents a change in social norms such as values and perceptions, and it affects social movements, causing social and political changes. In this virtual communication proce...

This chapter aims to provide a general description of the preferred pedagogical approaches for the delivery and practice of computer science education based on a review of the literature. Pedagogical approaches mainly used in the teaching of computer science are unplugged activities, robotics program-ming, block-based or initial programming environ...

p class="1">While ubiquitous in everyday use, in reality, social media usage within higher education teaching has expanded quite slowly. Analysis of social media usage of students and instructors for teaching, learning, and research purposes across four countries (Russia, Turkey, Germany, and Switzerland) showed that many higher education instructo...

Teaching online requires different skills, roles and competencies for online instructors compared to teaching in traditional learning environments. Universities should offer ongoing support in various forms to help academic staff through their online journey. This paper provides insights into a multinational faculty development program for teaching...

The situation in Ukraine poses severe problems to the higher education system and to students in Eastern Ukraine. Many students and academicians had been compelled to leave their university buildings and move westwards. Hence, they are forced to substitute face-to-face teaching with distance learning, often on a large scale, but within a short span...

The emerging field of learning analytics requires the attention of scholars due to it being a fairly new area in which limited research has been conducted. This study as a systematic literature review of studies that focused on learning analytics in any format of distance education, with qualitative content analysis conducted on the retrieved studi...

The potential represented by the usage of Internet-based communication technologies in parallel with e-instruction is enabling learners to cooperate and collaborate throughout the world. However, an important dimension, namely the socialization of learners through online dialogues via e-mail, discussion forums, chats, blogs, wikis and virtual class...

Computational Thinking (CT) has become popular in recent years and has been recognised as an essential skill for all, as members of the digital age. Many researchers have tried to define CT and have conducted studies about this topic. However, CT literature is at an early stage of maturity, and is far from either explaining what CT is, or how to te...

Faculty development in the area of emerging technologies is demanding and resource intensive. This increases when aiming to qualify instructors to support their teaching virtually, e.g. in blended- and distance learning environments. Most elements of instructional design, delivery, and assessment require rethinking for technology integration. It is...

With the excessive use of social media in the 21st century, attempts to integrate social media within higher education have also increased. In this area, research has been particularly focused on the aspects of students, rather than the instructors. This study puts the emphasis on the instructors with the aim to explore their use of social media in...

Computing was perceived as an essential skill for computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians and those from similar disciplines. Today, to the contrary, people of most ages are expected to possess basic computing skills in parallel with the requirements of up-to-date technological tools. To equip students with the necessary skills, computer sci...

e-Learning is becoming more popular than ever with the advent of new technologies and new inventions for teaching and learning. Hence, competent e-Instructors are key to successful e-Learning implementations and they should have the appropriate skills and experience for the effective implementation of e-Learning and blended learning. e-Instructors...

The popularity of online programs that educational institutions offer is continuously increasing at varying degrees, with the major demand coming from adult learners who have no opportunity to access traditional education. These adult learners have to be sufficiently ready and competent for online learning, and have their own varied expectations fr...

e-Learning is becoming more popular than ever with the advent of new technologies and new inventions for teaching and learning. Hence, competent e-Instructors are key to successful e-Learning implementations and they should have the appropriate skills and experience for the effective implementation of e-Learning and blended learning. e-Instructors...

The popularity of online programs that educational institutions offer is continuously increasing at varying degrees, with the major demand coming from adult learners who have no opportunity to access traditional education. These adult learners have to be sufficiently ready and competent for online learning, and have their own varied expectations fr...

In the scope of EU FP7 Era.Net RUS project 1 called SoMeCat (Social Media as a Catalyzer for Cross National Learning), a social media (SoMe) toolkit 2 has been developed to help instructors effectively integrate SoMe into education. Since it was developed as a prototype, a research study for ensuring the reliability and validity of the toolkit need...

Computer programming is perceived as an important competence for the development of problem solving skills in addition to logical reasoning. Hence, its integration throughout all educational levels, as well as the early ages, is considered valuable and research studies are carried out to explore the phenomenon in more detail. In light of these fact...

Öğrencilerin daha iyi öğrenmelerine yardımcı olabilmek ve öğrencilere uygun öğretim tasarımı yapabilmek amacıyla öğrencilerin öğrenme stillerini belirlemek önemlidir. Bu nedenle bu çalışmada çevrimiçi öğrenme ortamlarındaki öğrencilerin öğrenme stillerini ortaya çıkarmak amacıyla “e-Öğrenme Stilleri Ölçeği” geliştirmek amaçlanmıştır. Ölçek geliştir...

The aim of this research study was to explore the effect of instructional techniques on critical thinking and critical thinking dispositions in online discussion, based on triangulation design. Six Thinking Hats, Brainstorming, Role Playing, Socratic Seminar, and Anyone Here an Expert, were selected as an instructional techniques for online discuss...

How and what would you teach if you had only one course to help students explore the essence of computation and perhaps inspire a few of them to think computationally? Generally, students learn all the information and communication tools provided to them, but they are never expected to write any computer programs. A new ICT curriculum, which starte...

In this paper we present the outcomes of two international projects , both dealing primarily with innovations implemented in Eastern European academic teaching. The outcomes are publicly available in Russian, plus most are also in English, and some in Armenian and Ukrainian. In this session we aim to publicise the results, share our experiences fro...

Social media (SoMe) is everywhere in our daily life. People have started to use social media in almost every aspect and field of life, however, limited attention has been paid so far to studying the potential of social media for educational purposes. So an important question is “How to use social media efficiently for teaching-learning processes?”...

The aim of this study is to create an online teaching style inventory by investigating other teaching styles in the literature within the scope of EU FP7 Era.Net RUS (Russia) project called Somecat (Social Media as a Catalyser for Cross National Learning). To do so, different perspectives on teaching styles were analysed. According to information c...

In an ongoing EU FP7 Era.NET RUS project,1 utilizing a mixed-method approach (interviews/focus group (n=145) in four countries; online teach- ing style survey), we, among others, researched how instructors and students in higher education (HE) use social media (SoMe) for teaching, learning, and research. We revealed potential benefi ts of SoMe usage...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation, Evolution, and Perspectives, ISSEP 2014, held in Istanbul, Turkey, in September 2014. The 13 full papers presented together with 2 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The focus of the conference was...

This study is conducted to develop a scale for assessing the effectiveness of blended learning environments based on the features of both face-to-face and online learning environments and provide suggestions for stakeholders. In the process of scale development, data gathered from 314 students were analyzed. The reliability and validity results for...

This article is a summary of the work carried out by the Ministry of Education in Turkey, in terms of the development of a new ICT Curriculum, together with the e-Training of teachers who will play an important role in the forthcoming pilot study. Based on recent literature on the topic, the article starts by introducing the " F@tih Project " , a n...

This study is conducted to develop a scale for assessing the effectiveness of blended learning environments based on the features of both face-to-face and online learning environments and provide suggestions for stakeholders. In the process of scale development, data gathered from 314 students were analyzed. The reliability and validity results for...

Öğrencilerin süreç öncesinde e-Öğrenme sürecine ilişkin Hazır bulunuşluk düzeyleri ve süreç sonrasında memnuniyet düzeylerinin belirlenmesi ve dikkate alınması, hem sürece hem de sonuca ilişkin çok önemli bulgular ortaya çıkmasına ve bu bulgulara dayalı yeni yaklaşım ve stratejilerin üretilmesi ile e-Öğrenme sürecinde öğretimin etkiliğinin ve verim...

Yapılandırmacı yaklaşıma göre öğrencinin sürece aktif katılımının sağlanması, bir ürün ortaya çıkarması ve öğrenciye bu ürünü sunabilme becerisi kazandırılabilmesi önemli kazanımlardır. Bu bilgiler ışığında bu çalışma için Schank’ın “Hedefe Dayalı Senaryo Yaklaşımı” ele alınmış ve bu yaklaşım “Bilimsel Araştırma Yöntemleri” dersi sürecinde uygulanm...

ABSTRACT Together with the evolution of information and communication technologies, there are many synchronised and asynchronised moderation approaches together with e-assessment strategies that are already being used by many institutions. Since the elearning environment is the learning management system based on web technologies and Internet conne...

According to the constructivist approach, ensuring students' active participation, revealing a product and acquiring an ability of presentation of their product are important educational attainments. In the light of these facts, Schank's approach of "Goal-Based Scenario" was taken into consideration and administered to students during teaching "Res...

Learning preferences and learning styles are a way to enhance the quality of learning, especially for those who are alone in front of a computer, i.e. online students. Any student can adapt learning processes, activities and techniques, if he/she is able to understand his/her own personal characteristics and the consequences of possible different e...