Through the widespread use of the Internet, WebQuest has become one of the popular techniques in a variety of fields of science and arts for teaching different age groups and levels. This study is conducted to research the effectiveness of this approach in English language learning and to determine possible problems in its implementation. Thus, the purpose of this study is to design, develop, and implement this new approach and to evaluate the learners&rsquo / experiences with it. The participants of this study were the students of a preparatory school at a state university. Twenty-five learners participated in this study. In line with the scope of the research, a WebQuest site was designed which require learners to complete a task related to the curriculum and learning objectives of their English courses. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed to assess the learner perceptions about the WebQuest site design, the steps of the process, group work, and the contribution of the application to language learning. According to the findings of this study, participants appreciated the WebQuest approach and they provided important suggestions for future applications.

Physically Interactive Games (PIGs) have emerged as a new game genre and potential as an educational tool in classrooms. In PIGs, children are allowed to interact with game environment and solving problems by using their bodily movements and voices without using mouse or keyboard by being active physically and cognitively. Designing PIGs is critical and difficult process because it is vital that educational content and entertainment parts of a game should be balanced properly considering interaction between children and game environment. The current dissertation aims to explore principles of designing and developing physically interactive educational games for children. Mainly, qualitative data collection techniques were used in the study. Also, Reeves&rsquo / Development Research Model was administered under the Design-Based Research. Both Mathematics and Physical Education subjects were integrated within the game environments. Totally four physically interactive games were designed and developed. During the design and development phases, field experts, subject-matter experts and children&rsquo / s expectations, needs and recommendations were taken into account. During the development phase, 5 teachers with 3 Mathematics and 2 Physical Education teachers as subject matter experts participated to the study. Also, 10 v children with 5 boys and 5 girls participated to the design phase. In the implementation phase, 30 children with 17 boys and 13 girls participated in Pilot Implementation and 50 children with 27 boys and 23 girls participated to the Final Implementation phase. The study revealed that camera screen was the main deterministic factor in order to play physically interactive educational games properly. Girls and boys had different considerations about the developed games. The bigger camera screen physically interactive games had, the higher motivation children had during gameplay. At the end of the study, design principles of physically interactive educational games were defined.

This study aimed to identify the relationship between foreign language speaking anxiety and foreign language learning motivation. In addition to this, the motivational level of learners, the effect of gender on this motivational level and the relationship between motivational orientations were examined. Besides, the level of foreign language speaking anxiety that the students experience, the effect of gender on this anxiety and the relationship between foreign language speaking anxiety and students&rsquo / motivational level were also investigated. Finally, foreign language speaking anxiety was studied in detail via face to face interviews. Participants of the study included 383 pre-intermediate students at Afyon Kocatepe University English preparatory program. The data were collected via two questionnaires administered to these participants and 19 participants were interviewed to get in-depth data on speaking anxiety. The quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics. The content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The results of the quantitative data revealed that students had a moderate level of foreign language learning motivation, female students were more motivated than males and motivational orientations were positively correlated on a moderate level. It was also found that students at AKU experienced a low level of foreign language speaking anxiety and female students got more anxious than males while speaking English in classroom atmosphere. Besides, foreign language speaking anxiety and foreign language learning motivation were found to be negatively correlated on a moderate level. Quantitative data of the study demonstrated that foreign language speaking anxiety is a separate phenomenon with its own sources, aspects, variables and effects on learners.

3D virtual worlds are emerging distance education technologies that offer collaborative learning environments and provide effective ways to apply task-based activities. The aim of this case study was to examine the contribution of task-based language learning in 3D virtual worlds to speak English as a foreign language among university preparatory class students in terms of anxiety, motivation, and self-confidence. Therefore, different English speaking practice tasks/activities were designed in Second Life. Participants had different roles based on the determined tasks and had speaking experiences with native speakers, friends, and instructors of METU preparatory school. Fifteen upper-intermediate level preparatory class students in the Department of Basic English at Middle East Technical University participated in the study which comprised a four week time span in May 2011. Data of the study included the qualitative data, gathered from the interviews. Those interviews were administered after the study to understand the effectiveness of task-based language learning in Second Life for students&#039 / anxiety, motivation, and self-confidence towards speaking English. According to the results, this study revealed important findings for language education field. The results of this study demonstrated the effectiveness of task-based language learning in Second Life environment which had positive impact on students. In this respect, it is suggested that the Second Life experience provided students to gain motivation and self-confidence and overcome their anxiety related problems towards speaking English. Therefore, this study may offer an insight for further studies to investigate the effectiveness of 3D virtual environments in language education, especially in Turkey.

The purpose of this study was to investigate mistakes made by elementary fifth grade students regarding basic fractional concepts and operations, and difficulties that they encounter. The other purpose was to investigate underlying misconceptions and reasons of those difficulties and mistakes. For this purpose, a mixed-method research combining quantitative and qualitative approach respectively was performed. Data were collected from elementary fifth grade students at the end of the spring semester of 2009-2010. Operation with Fraction Questionnaire (OFQ) was administered to 151 fifth grade students who were chosen from the two public elementary schools in Eskisehir province. By this way, difficulties that elementary fifth grade students encounter and mistakes they make regarding basic fractionalconcepts and operations was analyzed. Afterwards, sixteen of these students participated in a semi-structured interview which was designed to investigate underlying reasons and misconceptions behind those mistakes and difficulties. Results were presented in two phases. In the first phase, common mistakes and difficulties of students were analyzed in detail and representative examples of these errors were introduced. In the second phase, students&#039 / mistakes were grouped under five categories as: algorithmically based mistakes, intuitively based mistakes, mistakes based on formal knowledge on fractions, misunderstanding on problem, and missing information in solution. In this phase, misconceptions and underlying reasons of those mistakes and difficulties which students may encounter while learning fractions were described. Results revealed that there was evidence that fifth grade students made various mistakes regarding fractional concepts and operations in the fifth grade elementary mathematics curriculum and they had many misconceptions regarding fraction concepts and operations.

In this study, Concept map (CM) development processes of the experts and novices were explored. This studyaimed to investigate the similarities and differences among novices and experts&rsquo / CM development process regarding their cognitive processes. Two experiments were designed / eye-tracking, written and verbal data were collected from 29 pre-service teachers and 6 subject matter experts.Data were analyzed by using qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods. The results indicated that eventhough some of the strategies were similar, there were different patterns followed by the experts and novices during the CM development process. Both experts and novices embraced &lsquo / deductive reasoning&rsquo / , and preferred &lsquo / hierarchical&rsquo / type of CMs. The other patterns recognized during the process were&lsquo / filling information in an order&rsquo / , &lsquo / branch construction pattern&rsquo / ,&lsquo / content richness&rsquo / and &lsquo / progress pattern&rsquo / . Novices and experts were distinguished in their content richness measures which used to determine the quality of the maps. Regarding the progress pattern, novices and experts differed in terms of the frequency and duration for specific acts invarious phases of their progress in CM development process. Furthermore, expert participants differed from novices in their fixation count numbers, fixation durations, visit duration periods for specific actions. Fixation count numbers of the novices were higher than the experts during the entire process and in specific dimensions of the CM development process. As a conclusion, these pattern differences affect the CM development process directly and the instructors need to give emphasis to these critical points while using CM during the instruction, and with the help of these pattern differences, instructors could guide the learner effectively and acquire content rich CMs.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the high school students&#039 / beliefs about mathematics and the teaching of mathematics. The study was conducted in Ankara with 425 tenth-grade students enrolled to general, Anatolian, foreign language and vocational high schools. Two measuring instruments were utilized: 1.Beliefs about Mathematics Scale (BaMS) / 2.Beliefs about the Teaching of Mathematics Scale (BTMS). The validity and reliability of these scales were tested. The design of the present research is a casual-comparative study. The hypotheses of the present study were tested by using multivariate analysis of variance at the significance level 0.05. The results of the study indicated that:1. There are statistically significant differences among the mean scores of students enrolled to different kinds of high schools with respect to beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 2. There are statistically significant mean differences among students who have different mathematics achievement levels in terms of beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 3. There are statistically significant mean differences among students who are in different branches in terms of beliefs about mathematics and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics / 4.There is no statistically significant mean difference between the male and female students on beliefs about mathematics. On the other hand, there is statistically significant mean difference between the male and female students on beliefs about the teaching of mathematics in the favor of female students.

The purpose of this study was to determine the learning styles of preparatory school students from Gazi University and examine the relationship between students&rsquo / learning style preferences (LSP) and faculty students will study in, gender, proficiency level of English and achievement scores on listening, reading, grammar, and writing in the English Course. The instrument, Index of Learning Styles (ILS), was administered to 367 randomly selected students. As for the data analysis, descriptive statistics portrayed the frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, the t test was conducted to see whether students&rsquo / achievement scores differ according to their LSPs and the Crosstabs procedure was conducted to investigate whether the LSPs of the students at Gazi University differ according to faculty they will study in, gender and level of proficiency. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between students&rsquo / LSPs and faculty, gender, level and achievement scores.

This qualitative exploratory case study focused on understanding how democracy and human rights education is carried out in a public elementary school in Turkey. A preliminary research was done in the USA in order to provide insight and experience into the study. An elementary school was chosen as a single case in Ankara. The study examined the perceptions of the school community (teachers, students, administrator and parents) related to democracy and human rights education through interviews. The participation to the study was completely based on voluntary action. Six teachers, 38 students, 16 parents and an administrator were interviewed. Observations and document analyses also enabled the researcher to find out the current instructional process concerning democracy and human rights education in different grade levels at elementary education. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Research results revealed that democracy is not only a goal to be reached, and not just a form of government but also a concept experienced in all stages of schools. The major finding of the study was that there is a gap between what the school teaches as theory and the reality experienced in school and at home. All participants agreed that democracy and human rights education should start at early grades, preferably in kindergarten through establishing authentic learning environments where a variety of instructional methods, techniques, materials, textbooks and technology are employed. Besides, the school community indicated the importance of character education, school culture and values that are reflected through the hidden curriculum in schools for effective democracy and human rights education.

In this thesis, a low bit rate video coding system based on three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet coding is studied. In addition to the initial motivation to make use of the motion compensated wavelet based coding schemes, the other techniques that do not utilize the motion compensation in their coding procedures have also been considered on equal footing. The 3-D wavelet transform (WT) algorithm is based on the &ldquo / group of frames&rdquo / (GOF) concept. The group of eight frames are decomposed both temporally and spatially to their coarse and detail parts. The decomposition process utilizes both orthogonal and bi-orthogonal wavelet analysis filters. The transform coefficients are coded using an embedded image coding algorithm, called the &ldquo / Two-Dimensional Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees&rdquo / (2-D SPIHT). Due to its nature, the 2-D SPIHT is applied to the individual subband frames. In the reconstruction phase, the 2-D SPIHT decoding algorithm and the wavelet synthesis filters are employed, respectively. The Peak Signal to Noise Ratios (PSNRs) are used as a quality measure of the reconstructed frames. The investigations reveal that among several factors, the multi-level (de)composition is the dominant one effective both on the signal compression and the PSNR level. The encoded videos compressed to the ratio of 1:9 are reconstructed with the PSNR of about 30 dB in the best cases.