A New Distance Education Model and Application Platform in Higher Education

Within the scope of the project, it is aimed to develop a cloud-based and easy-to-use distance education platform that will facilitate the transition of universities to distance education due to the COVID-19 epidemic, in compliance with the personal data protection law. In addition, a platform has been developed where universities without infrastructure can continue their distance education activities whenever they wish. Within the scope of the project, an economical solution has been produced for universities that do not have sufficient distance education infrastructure. When the project started, a presentation was made to the Council of Higher Education and it was decided to be used by 12 universities in the 2020 Fall semester. The system, which is the output of the project, was named UZEP and included; Modules such as Learning Management System (OYS), virtual classroom, material sharing, announcement, reporting and distance measurement-evaluation, which were specially developed for universities, were added. UZEP management software and virtual classroom servers were deployed at TÜBİTAK-ULAKBİM, so both information resources were shared and personal data of students and lecturers were kept in the country. Since ULAKBİM is also the internet service provider of universities, the system is in a structure to provide uninterrupted online education to all universities in our country without bandwidth problems. UZEP has also been a price balancing factor for universities that purchase services from distance education service providers. UZEP is still used by our universities and improvement processes continue through feedback. With the project, a distance education platform that can be put into service in a short time for all universities in emergencies has been developed in our country with domestic facilities. In this way, universities with insufficient infrastructure will be able to meet their distance education needs through the platform. It is very costly for each university to establish its own distance education infrastructure, and it is difficult to find qualified personnel to keep these systems running. In the project, an economical solution was produced for the need for distance education infrastructure in higher education institutions by sharing resources. It has been revealed from the surveys that UZEP is liked by students, instructors and administrators. In this context, it is planned to continue working on issues such as the security of remote exams, skill and competence measurement.