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This study aims to investigate a collaborative synchronous learning environment in terms of students' community of inquiry perceptions (cognitive, social, and teaching presences) and interaction levels. This quantitative study was conducted with the participation of fifty-nine freshmen (twenty-nine in the control group and thirty in the experimental group) in the department of Information Technologies at a university. The study lasted nine weeks, including two weeks of data collection and seven weeks of implementation procedure. After the implementation, the Community of Inquiry Scale and the Online Course Interaction Level Determination Scale were administered to the participants. The results revealed that co-operative synchronous learning experiences positively influenced students' community of inquiry perceptions and interaction levels in the experimental group. Further results and implications are discussed at the end.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the changes that occurred between 2010 and 2015 in the Internet activities performed, Internet use skills, online risks, and coping strategies related to such risks of children between the ages of nine and 16 in Turkey as well as the impact of the contextual issues on such changes. An explanatory design using mixed research methods was used for this study. In the quantitative part of the study, the data were collected from 784 children between the ages of nine to 16 who were selected, via a survey, from 12 regions in Turkey in 2015. The data were compared to 2010 data which used similar sampling method and instruments and which collected from 1018 children. In the qualitative part of the study, 84 participants were interviewed, including two children, two parents, two teachers, and a school administrator from each of the 12 regions. The results showed that the Internet access age for children has gradually decreased and that children's Internet access time has increased. An increase has also occurred in regard in the activities performed by children online, such as social networking and watching online movies or video clips, which adds up to an increase in the entertainment factor related to the Internet for children. A significant increase has also occurred in the number of children who feel uncomfortable when they are not online, seek new friends online, and receive general sexually explicit messages over the Internet due to the long hours that they spend online.

This qualitative study aims to examine teachers' opinions concerning the middle school curricula that have been in use for years, in order to determine its suitability for distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants consisted of eighteen middle school teachers from different subject areas in Turkey. A maximum variation sampling method was employed for participant selection. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Due to the pandemic, the interviews were conducted using video conferencing applications. The data was analyzed through content analysis. According to the findings, the teachers report that while they are effective in achieving cognitive objectives, they have difficulties in achieving affective and psychomotor objectives. In addition, the teachers do not prefer to design their own materials, rather they mainly benefit from ready-to-use materials during emergency distance education. The teachers also reveal that direct instruction and questioning were the teaching methods and techniques they preferred in online courses and that they were unable to adapt other methods and techniques to distance education, which resulted in students experiencing teacher-centered activities. Moreover, the teachers complain about students not attending the online courses on time or even at all, their disinterest, a lack of instant feedback, limited communication with students, and insufficient course lengths. Another critical finding was that the teachers only use homework, end-of-unit quizzes, and participation to online courses as measurement and evaluation tools and agree that they are unable to administer reliable and valid evaluation tools. The limitations of the study and implications for future research are later discussed.

The aim of this study is to examine mobile games in the context of their content and to evaluate the situations faced by children through document analysis in terms of age-rating, game score, access permissions, the inclusion of advertisements, in-game purchases, encouraging consumerism, the inclusion of violence, bad habits, and educational value. The review and rating data of the games which can be found in Common Sense Media and Google Play Store were included in the study. These data were analyzed by descriptive content analysis using frequency (f) and percentage(%) values. According to our findings, it was revealed that 92% of the games involved in the study included in-game purchases and 75% of them included advertising. As a result of the investigations, it was also found that mobile games requested a lot of access permissions during installation. In addition, it was concluded that 90% of mobile games encouraged consumerism and 50% contained violence and fear elements. We think that the results are important in the way that they reveal the possible risks encountered by young people while they are playing mobile games and also in terms of increasing the awareness on the subject for both the users and their parents. [This study was presented as a paper at the International Computer and Instructional Technologies Symposium (ICITS-2019) (13th, Kirs¸ehir, May 2-4, 2019.]

Introduction: Previous studies have indicated that acute bouts of strenuous, long duration exercise induce significant increases in the inflammatory profile and cardiovascular risk markers. Although recreational soccer (RS) is a widespread activity, there are no data on this topic. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine RS-induced changes in inflammatory, cardiac, and skeletal muscle damage indicators in young and middle-aged males.

This action research aims to investigate the determinants of asynchronous interaction among students, interaction between students and instructors, and interaction with course content in an online learning environment. The study involves fifteen graduate students from a state university as participants. The research employed multiple data collection instruments, including commission meeting reports, focus-group sessions, semi-structured interviews, observation forms, emails, video recordings, researchers' diaries, and system log records. The content analysis method was employed for data analysis. The findings revealed that in learner-learner interaction, instructional method, notifications, technical issues, and individual problems exert discernible effects. For learner-instructor interaction, feedback, instructional methods, and the utilization of diverse communication channels were identified as influential factors. Moreover, technical problems, time constraints, and system usability emerged as key elements shaping learner-content interaction. Notably, learners' personal preferences, encompassing attitudes toward the online course and time management, manifested both positive and negative effects across all interaction types. The study has concluded that assignments with open access, star-based scoring, and mobile notifications enhance learner-learner interaction. Instant feedback from instructors and notifications initiated by instructors enhances learner-instructor interaction. Overall, optimal system usability and minimal technical issues contribute substantively to augmenting learner-content interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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