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COMPUTER EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT STUDENTS' FAILURE REASONS (CUKUROVA SAMPLE) Serkan DİNÇER Cukurova University Education Faculty Department of CEIT

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ABSTRACT: Students fail in their classes due to some reasons such as disorganizations in education, their viewpoints to university, personal problems, etc. This study was carried out to discover the problems of the students who are in CEIT Department, and these students constitute the sample group of the study. In the study, the reasons of the failure were sought, and also students’ problems with education and lecturers were investigated under three sub-headings. 45-item evaluation questionnaire was applied, and the data was examined through SPSS program. To get objective analysis from the students, the researcher did not ask the students in the sampling group their personal information out of classroom. Before completing evaluation questionnaire, the students were asked to classify the reasons of failure in the order of importance from 1 to 5. However, because there was no statistical significance in the reasons 4 and 5, only the first three choices in the order of importance were evaluated. Data was evaluated for each of the classes independently, and due to no significant difference between day and night classes, the data was evaluated in respect of the classes and all sampling group. This study is considered to be important because there were not enough resources for the failure of the students who are in CEIT. Key Words: Reasons of Failure, Problems of CEIT Students, Academic Success.

INTRODUCTION: If the reasons of the students’ failure are examined, two reasons stand directly out: their personal problems and the problems of the educational institution. In the literature review, while there are enough resources that seek the effects of students’ psychological-personal problems to their academic success, not enough sources that search for the other effects were found. Some of the sources that we came across during the literature review are: Although university students face some problems, they do not seem to be really reluctant to get professional help to overcome these problems. The problems of university students vary from interpersonal relationships to the dimensions in which neurotic inclinations are displayed. These problems may appear as academic, occupational, familial, social harmony, depression, and etc. (Ozbay, 1996). The findings of two researches about the university youth’s problems were covered by (Ekşi, 1992). Ekşi, in two different semesters (1974-75 and 1977-78), laid the stress on families’ not giving their children enough chance to gain their emotional independences, and he also emphasized that this being dependent to their families caused these young people to be shy and obedient, and to feel guilty if they attempt to do something independent from their families. Ekşi, additionally, expresses that social effects that give too much value to masculinity increase the sexual fears of male, and males’ being too close to mother make it harder for them to earn their masculine identity. Eksi states that girls on the other hand are in the conflict with their own superior ego and their love needs, and he expresses that woman are having some problems in balancing their modern woman role and traditional role (Kılıçcı, 1989, p. 70).

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There has been some researches on the factors that affect students such as school, environment, family, socio-economic status, university facilities, profession choice, etc. In their study that was conducted at 24 universities and 7242 individuals, Rolon and Richards (1965) examined the relationship between students first year academic success and their participation in extra-curricular activities, and they found 0.04 correlation between these two variables. This result means that academic and non-academic success can be said to have really independent skill areas from each other. According to the studies conducted by Tarman (1947); Fankel (1958); Astin (1964) and Nichols (1965), students’ being from a high socio-economic and high academic families affects positively, or vice versa. Tarman (1947) expressed that successful students have more selfconfidence, and more optimist, unsuccessful ones are more optimist (Özgüven. 1974, p. 19). University life requires people to continue their relationships in a social environment. Dormitory or classroom environment makes it a must to have interaction aims, and new social skills and efforts (Özbay, 1997). It can be understood from the research conducted at Middle East Technical University that most of the students participated in this study do not really know what faculties or what departments there are in their faculties, or what sub-departments there are in their departments (İmamoglu, 1993). Most of the problems that belong to academic fields originate from the reasons that make the students go to a university. Generally, some of the reasons for going to a university are: to have a profession, to develop personality, to be independent from family, or to do academic studies. In this sense, the reasons for going to a university can be thought as three dimension: psychological, economic, and social (Ozbay, 1997). According to Weiner (1983) individuals build up happiness, confidence and personal satisfaction in return for success; affliction, disappointment and depression in return for failure, and these feelings vary according to the perceiving ways of success-failure reasons. On the other hand, as stated before, some relationships between depressive signs, explanation way and academic success have been observed. More importantly, some studies were conducted to remove academic failure by changing the explaining styles about the failure, and it was asserted that changes in the explanation styles had some preventive effects on failure (Aydin, 1998). If it is aimed to ensure the environment that is necessary for changing depressed young people into productive ones, firstly, the middle age group should have the necessary flexibility and protect social order. Then, these fast social changes’ fluctuations may help young individuals’ natural depressions to be less destructive (Guven, 1989). Ozguven (1974) states in this study which he conducted at Hacettepe University on 609 students about the factors affecting the academic success that %44 of the students felt stressful in different levels, %77 of the group were in a moderate mood, and this situation had an important effect on students’ academic success (Cited in Akkılıçcı, 1989). In another study of Ozguven (1974), it was found that students who are in a high mood had a better academic success, and the ones who had a bad mood had really bad academic success. In Yapıcı’s (2003) study named “Failure Reasons of University Students”, the reasons for failing were examined under three main titles: “Reasons about the lecturer”, “Individual and Self Reasons”, “Reasons about the Faculty”. (The results of this study will be analyzed in the Findings section.)

METHOD: Universe and Sample: The universe of this study is the CEIT students, and the sample is the 198 volunteer students of Cukurova University Faculty of Education. They are first, second, third and fourth year day and night class students. Research Model: This study has an evaluation questionnaire and Survey Model, and it aims to search for the failure reasons of the students at CEIT department and to decrease these limitations. Data Collection And Statistics: To find out the failure reasons of the students, a question bank was created, and a 45 item evaluation questionnaire was prepared from this bank. In order to be objective, the voluntary students were explained not to

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write their personal information on the questionnaire form. Before starting to fill in the form, they were said to think of the two course(s) that they were unsuccessful most, and put an (X) for the failure reasons to the blank next to the questionnaire items. Then, students were asked to identify 5 of the most important ones that they marked, and to number them from 1 to 5. Data were examined in respect of all students and each class in SPSS program. In the findings, there were no significant relationship in the 4th and 5th items, and no significant relationship was found between the day and night class students. Therefore, significance line was limited to first three reasons. Additionally, striking comments were given place; study was examined as only classes. Besides, after evaluation questionnaire, interviews were conducted with the voluntary students, and noted down the things they wanted to add.

FINDINGS: Data collected from the student were examined via SPSS program, the frequency of the students in respect of the classes was shown in Table-1. Table–1. The Distribution of the students in respect of classes Class 1. Class 2. Class 3. Class 4. Class TOTAL

Frequency 42 51 38 67 198

Percent (%) 21,2 25,8 19,2 33,8 100

The failure reasons of the first year students in respect of importance were shown in Table-2. Table–2. The failure reasons of the first year students in respect of importance Respect of Importance 1 2 3

Answer (item) 20 25 45

Frequency 11 8 6

Percent (%) 26,2 17 14,2

The failure reasons of the second year students in respect of importance were shown in Table-3. Table–3. The failure reasons of the second year students in respect of importance Respect of Importance 1 2 3


Frequency 16 5 4

Percent (%) 31,4 9,8 7,8

The failure reasons of the third year students in respect of importance were shown in Table-4.

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Table–4. The failure reasons of the third year students in respect of importance Respect of Importance 1 2 3


Frequency 8 3 5

Percent (%) 21 7,9 13,2

The failure reasons of the fourth year students in respect of importance were shown in Table-5. Table–5. The failure reasons of the fourth year students in respect of importance Respect of Importance 1 2 3


Frequency 13 7 8

Percent (%) 19,4 10,4 11,9

The failure reasons of the all students in respect of importance were shown in Table-6. Table–6. The failure reasons of the all students in respect of importance Respect of Importance 1 2 3


Frequency 36 30 28

Percent (%) 18,2 15,2 14,2

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The statistical results are explained in results section. As seen in Table-1, 198 CEIT department students took part in the study. As seen in Table-2, the first reason of first year students’ failure is “due to not having basic information or not knowing beforehand.”(20th item). (f=11, %26,2). Second reason is “due to not doing the exercises, and not repeating them regularly.(25th item) (f=8, %17); the third one is “due to not knowing about the course topics, and consequently not getting prepared for the class”(45th item)(f=6, %14,2). In Table-3, it is seen that the first reason of second year students’ failure is “due to not having basic information or not knowing anything beforehand.”(20th item).(f=16, %31,4). Second one is “due to not approving lecturers teaching styles” (38th item)(f=5, %9,8). The third reason is “due to not being able to communicate with the lecturers” (27th item)(f=4, %7,8). In Table-4, it is seen that third year students’ first reason for failure is “due to disliking the course”(14th item)(f=8, %21). Second reason is “Due to not knowing about the course topics, and consequently not getting prepared for the classes.”(45th item)(f=3, %7, 9). The last reason is “due to not having basic information or not knowing anything beforehand.”(20th item).(f=5, %13,2). In Table-5, fourth year students first reason for failure is “due to the lecturers’ defective information about the course content”(30th item)(f=13, %19,4). Second one is “due to not approving lecturers teaching styles” (38th item)(f=7, %10,4). The third reason is “due to not practicing in the practices classes”(36th item)(f=8, %11,9).

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To understand the reasons for failure in general, as in table-6, it can be concluded that the main reason for failure is ““due to not having basic information or not knowing anything beforehand.”(20th item)(f=36, %18,2). The second reason is “due to not approving lecturers teaching styles” (38th item)(f=30, %15,2). And the last one is “due to not practicing in the practices classes”(36th item)(f=28, %14,2). When the second line frequencies of the items in the first line which had a high frequency were examined, the results in table–7 appear. Table–7. The second importance line frequencies of the items in the first line Class

Answer (Item)

1 2 3 4 TOTAL

20 20 14 30 20

First Line Frequency (%) 26,2 31,4 21 11,9 18,2

Second Line Frequency (%) 6 2 0 6 12

Frequency (%) 14,3 3,0 0,0 9,0 6,1

In the related tables and table–7, it is seen that the results are the same with the answers of the second importance line. It has been identified that the main reason for failure is “not having basic knowledge about the courses”. Third and fourth year students’ main failure reason is found to be “reasons about the course and lecturers.” Firstly, first and second year CEIT students failed more in the computer science courses. The most important reason for this failure is identified to be “not having enough substructures about the course content.” The main reason for this is that students do not get a good computer training, and even meeting computer after coming to universities. Additionally, students also stated another reason for their failure in the questionnaire that is “due to not having personal computer”(f=4). It is obvious that their not having personal computer and their not using computer where they live (house, dormitory, etc.) is the other reason for the failure. From the interviews that were conducted with the students after questionnaire application, they stated that they had little or no knowledge about the department, and they thought CEIT department is just a department that train and educate computer teachers, and also they said that their needs are not met due to having only one computer course offered in their first year and not being offered such topics as programming, hardware, etc. (see item 31; f=14, %7,1). The reasons for the wrong or deficient information about the department was sought, and it has been found that students are not informed in their private courses while preparing for the university, and nothing is mentioned on unofficial CEIT web sites about the teaching technologies. In the study conducted by Yapıcı (2003), it was found that students (%57 of the females, %71 of the males) made their faculty or department choices without having any introductory information; %23 of females and %43 of male students think that lecturers do not have academic information about course content. %51 of female students and %57 of the females believe that the institutions do not have enough substructures, and these results have similar results with the current study, and this improves the reliability of the study.

SUGGESTIONS: Offering orientations to the freshmen students about department study areas, department courses and study plans, Increasing counseling services,

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Giving chance those students who do not have personal computer by scheduling certain days for free computer usage at the department, Forming study groups from all classes for upper class students to help low class students. Preparing feedback form for each lecturer, and applying this form at the end of each semester to all students, and by doing this, making the communication between students and lecturers better. Additionally, it is thought that applying CEIT failure reason questionnaire to other CEIT departments in different universities of Turkey, and also it will be beneficial to add gender choice to questionnaire and see if there is a significant difference between genders.

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