Abstract:

The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of blended learning’ students majoring with distance education about the concept of distance education via metaphors. Moreover, it has been investigated whether there is a significant difference on metaphors in terms of gender and department in the present study. A total of 130 students participated majoring with distance education at a university located in West-Blacksea region. The research data was collected via an electronic form including phrases like “distance education is similar ......; because.....”. Content analysis was used for data analysis in categorizing the metaphors and chi-square analysis also used to determine whether there is a significant difference in terms of gender and department. As a result of this study, it’s been seen that metaphors are collected under 6 sub-themes of “technological”, “form of education”, “being useful”, “being negative”, “autonomy” and “other”. The metaphors mostly developed by students were relatively “open learning”, “bubble”, “fruit”, “computer”. Furthermore, while it was found a significant difference on metaphors as to students’ depertmant, the difference was also no found as to students’ gender.

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