The rapid change in the communication technologies plays a significant role in the transformation processes of societies. The studies studying the industrial revolution in two phases inform us that the first phase of the revolution involved a revolution in machinery while the second phase saw a revolution in technology. Fast forwarding to the twentieth century, however, one of the areas that has been affected greatly from the said technological revolution is education. The structural changes in education are essential for a new educational process that is consistent with a heterogeneous student population and independent of time and space. In this respect, the new education system in information age has been come to be called open and distance education. In the 21 st century, when the information age gave way to the human age, we see learner oriented education system. Putting the learner at the center of the educational process, this particular system puts an end to binary opposition between the subject and object. Having aimed at identifying students' perception of open and distance education systembeing the educational technology of the twenty first century-, the present study has been conducted with 69 students that were presently enrolled to the Anadolu University Faculty of Open Education and entitled to the certificate of honor. A metaphor analysis method was employed within the scope of this study. In order to evaluate the students' perception of open education system, this study adopted a "phenomenological method" as its qualitative research method as it seemed to be more suited to its purpose. In order to identify the students' perception of open education system, they were given a semi structured questionnaire form that contained the following statement "Open Education is like ………… Because it is ………………" and asked to convey their thoughts by focusing exclusively on a single metaphor. The answers from the participants were recorded by a camera, transcribed and analyzed through the spreadsheets created on an excel table. The participants of the study came up with 69 valid and 45 different metaphors regarding the concept of open education. Such metaphors were aggregated under 7 different conceptual categories. At the end of the study, it was established that the students enrolled to the Open Education System regarded open education as a means to access to information.

This study, which was intended to measure the metaphorical perception levels of the female and male students enrolled to the Open University System, was structured according to the ZMET technique. In view of the research findings, ZMET test's deep metaphors of balance, transformation, journey, container, control were analyzed according to the students' variables of gender and place of residence. The chosen metaphors and indepth analyses, on the other hand, reveal that, both women's and men's learning is re-structured also within the dichotomy of practice and theory. The theory-centric responses received from the women, and men's responses oriented to application and distribution of knowledge put forth the necessity to take the gender difference into consideration while designing the educational contents.

Instructive and informative contents of the Public Service Announcements (PSAs) need to reach to all segments of the society.  Within this framework, the purpose of the research is to explain the importance of the narrative structure in the sight-disabled persons' access to the PSAs in terms of the up-to-date audio description criteria. In the study, the characters and the functions thereof in the narration have been reviewed within the frame of Labov & Riesmann's narrative analysis constituents, and answer has been sought to the question, "Are the spatio-temporal  constituents, motions, and the visual materials that depict the actions in connection with character definitions put into words for the sight-disabled persons?", by way of narrative analysis. While the 6 "Be Prepared for the Disasters!" PSAs are analyzed in terms of their narrative structures, the questions, "Who are the persons in the narrative? What are their functions in the narrative? What do these persons do in the narrative? Why do they do these things? What are the outcomes of them?" are required to be responded by six different experts serving in the fields of visual communication, audio-visual translation, and narrative communication, other than the researchers. As a result of the research, it has been determined that, the PSAs are not designed as being suitable for the access of the sight-disabled persons, and two model proposals have been introduced at the end of the research by way of taking inclusive design criteria other than the conventional audio description criteria into consideration. ​Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file.   Özet Kamu spotlarının, eğitici, bilgilendirici içerikleri ile toplumun tüm kesimlerine ulaşması gerekmektedir.  Bu çerçevede araştırmanın amacı, görme engelli bireylerin kamu spotlarına erişiminde anlatı yapısının önemini güncel sesli betimleme kriterleri çerçevesinde belirtmektir. Anlatıdaki karakterlerin ve işlevlerinin ne olduğu, Labov ve Riesmann’ın anlatı analizi bileşenleri çerçevesinde incelenmiş ve “Kamu spotunda anlatı oluşturulurken mekânsal-zamansal bileşenler, hareketler, karakter tanımlarıyla bağlantılı fiilleri betimleyen görsel materyaller, görme engelli bireyler için kelimelere aktarılmakta mıdır?” sorusuna anlatı analizi ile yanıt aranmıştır. İncelenen altı “Afetlere Hazırlıklı Ol!” kamu spotu, anlatı yapısı çözümlenirken “anlatıdaki kişiler kimler, bu kişilerin, anlatıdaki işlevi nedir, bu kişiler, anlatıda ne yapıyorlar, niçin yapıyorlar ve sonuçlar ne?” sorularına araştırmacılar dışında görsel iletişim, görsel- işitsel çeviri ve yazınsal iletişim alanında çalışan altı farklı uzmandan cevaplaması istenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda, kamu spotlarının görme engelli bireylerin erişimine uygun olarak tasarlanmadığı tespit edilmiş, geleneksel sesli betimleme kriterlerinin dışında kapsayıcı tasarım kriterleri dikkate alınarak iki model önerisi araştırma sonunda sunulmuştur.