Opinions of the students were collected via two questions directed to students who attended six virtual class
applications in three different terms in 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years. At the end of the term, two main
phenomenological questions were asked for analysis of the student’s perceptions of the online learning. The first
question was: “What are the motivating factors for the online course being conducted? Please explain briefly”.
With this question, students were asked to write the motivating factors for the course they were attending. The
second question was “According to you, what should be done to increase the motivation in an online course?”.
With this question, students were asked to explain the motivating factors that did not exist in their online courses
but should exist in the system. With this question, students were especially asked to reflect their ideas about the
motivating factors in online courses in the future. The students’ opinions were collected via a written form and
content analysis of the acquired opinions was made. Opinions were taken from 60 PhD students attending virtual
PhD courses.