One Year Experience of Distance Education at Abant Izzet Baysal University

The aim of this study is to introduce the features of the learning management system (LMS) used in the online learning environment at Abant Izzet Baysal University (AIBU) and provide the number of users in and usage of the LMS. Distance education at AIBU in Turkey started in the fall semester of the academic year 2014-2015. Regarding all the conditions of the university and characteristics of both open source and commercial learning management systems (LMS), an LMS integrated with an online conference tool was purchased from a private company. The LMS has basic features such as the most well-known LMSs except social media tools like blogs, wikis, etc. Also, the LMS was used by 8798 students and 44 instructors for four courses in the spring semester. However, although all instructors created synchronous sessions on a weekly basis regularly, the percentage of students’ attendance to synchronous activities is 10.