SHOULD ATATURK'S PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY OF TURKISH REVOLUTION COURSE BE COMPULSORY? UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ VIEWS AND SUGGESTIONS

Several research studies have been conducted in order to analyzethe university students motivation related to the required courses.Likewise, motivation of the students attending Vocational Schools andtheir motivation and interest in the compulsory courses have also beenresearched by some scholars in Turkey. (Bekdemir, 2009; Kademli &Hastürk, 2007). One of the compulsory courses given to all students atuniversities is Ataturk’s Principles and History of Turkish Revolution. Atsome universities, this course is conducted in the classrooms and atsome others as an online course. In order to create more motivation forthis course and improve the quality, the first thing to do was to evaluatethe course using Brown’s (1995) model. In this model, the followingdimensions were taken into consideration: needs analysis, goals andobjectives/content, teaching methods, materials used, homeworkassignments given, testing and evaluation. Therefore, this qualitativeresearch was conducted in order to get the students’ views andsuggestions related to Ataturk’s Principles and History of TurkishRevolution course. Open-ended questions were asked to 86 studentsattending the Vocational School of a foundation university in Istanbul,related to the dimensions mentioned above. The students were alsoasked whether they want this course to be compulsory or not andwhether they find it useful or not. 9 students were also interviewed. Thecontent analysis of the whole data revealed that students find thecourse useful and believe that it should continue to be compulsory.Nevertheless, they suggest major changes in regards the content,teaching methods, homework assignments, and testing and evaluationof the course