Abstract:

Web-based learning (WBL) has been widely implemented in various educational settings as a learning medium but there is a doubt about its superiority over text or lecture-based, teacher centered traditional education because of inconclusive findings in the related research. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of WBL on the teacher candidates’ content acquisition in a pedagogical course and on their attitudes toward this we-based course. Post-test only experimental study was conducted in a vocational teacher education program in Turkey. In the experimental group, WBL was conducted for three weeks for three topics: cognitive, moral and personality development and in the control group, lecture-based traditional teaching methods were applied. An achievement test was administered to both groups at the end of the study. According to the results, the groups did not show difference. In addition, the results of the attitude scale revealed that the students in the experimental group, on the average, had positive perceptions toward the web environment, web-based course, course instructor, course assessment, and success in the course. This result pointed out that though the impact of WBL on the acquisition of course topics did not differ between the groups, its positive impact on the students’ impression about teaching-learning process of the course, instructor and course assessment should not be ignored. Within the scope of this study, the results implied that WBL in teacher education might be applied in order to provide better learning environment rather than better knowledge gain. 

Keywords: