Distance Education in Turkey: Past-Present-Future

Overview & Synopsis

Recent advances in technology have radically changed the view of education. Today, there are millions of distance learners in the world. For example, United States (US) has had rapid growth in the use of technology for distance education. Like US, Turkey as a developing country and tries to develop its educational system. As there is no significant difference found between distance education and traditional way of education (Lockee, Burton & Cross, 1999), it provides learners a new avenue to develop their knowledge, get certificates, and take courses online. Therefore, there have been many studies carried out in distance education in the world and in Turkey. Especially on design and development of courses and programs via web-based education have started in the governmental universities as well. Some of the private universities are also seriously conducting their studies on distance education. For all of these studies, many articles have been published and many theses have been written. Based on these researches, this paper examines distance education in Turkey, its past, its current situation, and especially its future. How distance education has grown up, how it is growing, and what things are going to happen will be discussed and some suggestions for future reference will be given in this paper; therefore, some of our advantages and disadvantages in terms of distance education will also be examined.