Nowadays; educational systems focus on both the opportunities provided by information and communication technologies, as well as the new difficulties that these technologies bring. The system at the heart of these opportunities and problems is distance education. Distance education is an innovative education system in which live, video, and audio lessons are taught on a fully virtual platform by using computer technologies that exist completely independent of time and space; where the participants can watch them again at any time, and where education and training are quickly transmitted to a computer environment in today's conditions. As one of the fastest developing applications in education, distance education brings up different applications in accordance with information technologies.
On the other hand; as lifelong learning develops and gains importance, education emerges as a key component of all educational activities including both formal and informal education regardless of time and space. Also, distance education constitutes one of the most innovative aspects of lifelong learning as can be understood from the basic strategies in the "Lifelong Learning Memorandum" announced by the EU Commission in 2000;
Founded in 2009, Karadeniz Technical University Distance Education Application and Research Centre fulfils an important responsibility within the scope of lifelong learning with its implementation of distance education and certificate programs since its establishment. Besides; DEARC has supported various project studies, and in 2018, it contributed to raising an important awareness in Trabzon by conducting coding and robotics trainings as promising professions and training for children of different age groups. Considering the global economy that is being formed by the information technologies and the fact that distance education is no longer a choice but is a must; in the years to come, DEARC will continue to work on achieving the goals it has set, as well as training staff and improving opportunities to increase the quality of human resources to maximize the service quality it provides, and to improve the capacity and organizational capability of the institution.
