Digital Effect on University Decision: Perceptions of Teacher Candidates on Virtual Student Forums

Abstract

The objective of this study is to determine how much candidate teachers have utilized internet forums while deciding their university to study. This is a study in survey model. The population of the study consists of freshmen students studying at Usak University’s Faculty of Education in 2014-2015 academic year (400 students). The scale has been distributed to the entire population, while 267 of them have been returned and 251 of them have been evaluated. “Virtual Forum Utilization during University Decision Period” scale has been developed by the researchers. The initial scale consisting of 14 items has been applied to 150 students and two items with low factor load have been dismissed. The renewed 12 item scale has been re-applied to the students. Cronbach-Alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale has been calculated as .825. Validity of the scale has been tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and KMO value of the scale has been calculated as .811. According to the confirmatory factor analysis, the scale consists of seven items and its fit index value has proved to be acceptable. 94% of the candidate teachers have memberships at student forums, while 89% of them get online at these forums several times a day. 42% of the teacher candidates utilize these forums to follow current affairs. Candidate teachers have reported that they had frequently visited student forums while they were about to decide their university to study. Independent groups t test has yielded that there is no significant difference between the forum utilization levels of female and male candidate teachers. One way variance analysis has shown that candidate teachers at social sciences teaching department utilize student forums more than other departments.