Opinions of English Major Students about Their Departments' Websites

Opinions of English Major Students about Their Departments' Websites

University websites serve as sharing information with students whether prospective or enrolled. Often, before entering their departments, students visit them to have an idea as to what it would be like to be a part of that university and/or department. In that sense, websites help students in deciding whether the university matches their expectations. After enrollment, websites start to serve as their representative and an interactive ground for students, academics, and administrative personnel of the university. Because schools exist for students, their opinions matter. This study aimed to have students’ opinions of their departmental websites. For the purposes of this study, students of English or related majors (i.e. English language teaching, English linguistics, English language and literature, translation studies, American culture and literature) were sent a questionnaire to find out their opinions of their departments’ official websites. The results suggest that there are a number of areas for universities and departments to improve their websites to promote themselves in a more realistic manner that suits needs of their students.

___

  • Dragulanescu, N. G. (2002). Website quality evaluations: Criteria and tools. International Information and Library Review, 34, 247-254.
  • Feeney, A. (2006). Review of the book Task-Based Language Teaching. ELT Journal, 60(2), 199- 201.
  • Hulstijn, J. H. & Laufer, B. (2001). Some empirical evidence for the involvement load hypothesis in vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning, 51(3), (539-558).
  • Kent, M.L., & Taylor, M. (1998). Building dialogic relationships through the World Wide Web, Public Relations Review, 24(3), 321-334.
  • Kim, P., Eng, T. R., Deering, M.J., Maxfield, A. (1999), Information in practice: Published criteria for evaluating health related web sites. BMJ, 318(6), 647-649.
  • Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Ohlund, B., Ho Yu, C., Jannasch-Pennell, A., & DiGangi, S. A. (2000). Impact of asynchronous and synchronous Internet-based communication on collaboration and performance among K-12 teachers. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 23(4), 405-420.
  • Pinto, M., Guerrero, D., Fernandez-Ramos, A., Doucet, A. V. (2009). Information provided by Spanish university websites on their assessment and quality processes. Scientometrics, 81(1), 265-289.
  • Smith, A. G. (2001). Applying evaluation criteria to New Zealand government websites. International Journal of Information Management, 21, 137-149.
  • Thelwall, M., Binn, R., Harries, G., Page-Kennedy, L.P., Wilkinson, D. (2002). European Union associated university websites. Scientometrics, 53(1), 95-111.
  • Timisi, N. (2003). Yeni iletişim teknolojileri ve demokrasi, Ankara: Dost.
  • YOK. (2011). Turkish university lists. Retrieved on 15 May 2011 from http://www.yok.gov.tr/ content/view/527/222/lang,tr/
  • van den Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: Task-based language teaching in a nutshell. In V. D. B. Kris (Ed.): Task-based language education (pp. 1-17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Zhang, P., Von Dran, G.M. (2000), Satisfiers and dissatisfiers: A two-factor model for website design and evaluation. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14), 1253-1268.
  • Correspondence: Bugra Zengin, Assistant Professor, Department of Western Languages and
  • Literatures, Faculty of Science and Letters, Namik Kemal University, Tekirdag, Turkey