Abstract:

Distance learning is an educational method in which students study in times and places they prefer, do not have to be together with their instructors in a face-to-face interaction. In formal training, students have the opportunity to interact with their fellow students and instructors, however, in distance learning this interaction is difficult to achieve. As known, support services are designed in order to meet students’ social, academic and administrative needs, and more importantly, in order to improve the quality of educational services. Support services can be defined as services of all sorts which help students in each level of educational program, and provide them with the proper guidance. These include administrative services, earning services, technical services, consultancy services, career services and library services.

Since 1982, the open university system in Anadolu University has been providing distance education services for the students who do not have the opportunity to get formal university education in Turkey. 2018 figures show that it has two million students in 58 programs, two of which is in English, one of which is in Arabic, and others in Turkish. Its 105 offices in 81 cities in Turkey provide administrative services to all its students. Students can get their student certificates, control their military recruiting processes, change their exam places and offices, get their student ID cards, get textbooks for their courses, register and unregister programs, get career consultancy support, get their transcripts and diplomas, and get face-to-face education planning support. These offices are the realms where the students contact with their university. Provided that these services are properly designed for the demands and needs of the students, they improve the students’ attachment to their university, and support their educational experience.

The aim of the present study is to reveal the correlation between the distance learning students’ perception of office services and their achievements in education. The population of the research is the entire set of registered students in distance education, and its sample is the ones who were registered in 2017-2018 educational year, and voluntarily participated the questionnaire on the quality of office services.

Data acquisition technique of the research is questionnaire. The questions include expressions which evaluate office services. The expressions are adapted for the aim of the present research from Servqual scale developed by Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml (1985). The students are required to evaluate the services in terms of physical appearance, credibility, attention, trust and empathy. The data gathered will be analyzed by logistic regression analysis method.

The findings of the study are expected to contribute to improvement of efficient management of university’s resources. University administration may cancel inefficient services and design new ones. The findings are also expected to provide guidance for the improvement of offices. Repeating this research periodically would result in comprehensive analysis of support services.

Keywords:

Distance education, support services, perceived quality of services.