Evaluating the Social Domains within the Campus of Afyon Kocatepe University with the Pragmatic Dimension of the Semiotic Method

ABSTRACT University campuses, one of the most important places contributing to a city, are also important in terms of educational activities in addition to socio-cultural activities. In this concept, existence of places where social activities can take place is a sign in terms of social interaction and development of university campuses. It is necessary to place the units that will meet all needs of the campus users (students, academicians, administrators, technicians) in a certain order in university campuses. Today, design of university campuses, which have a big number of users, is getting more and more important. However, place analyses should be made for users’ needs, and improvements should be made upon the collected data in the existing campuses. A study was made in Afyon Kocatepe University Campus, which was chosen for a domain study, for an analysis of positive and negative aspects of the existing domains such as the social domains, recreational domains, musical and art domains, eating domains, libraries, and domains for the disabled. First, the existing domains in the campus were categorized into parts as social, cultural, sports, art, and music. A twitter account titled “AKU Crowd” was opened on a social media platform in order to get findings about the use potential and development of these parts. In this concept, opinions of the AKU students about the development and change of the campus were taken with the hashtags #akudegisim and #akucrowd. Intensely-used parts in the campus were determined in accordance with the tweets of AKU students, and the data were prepared as a legend. Survey questions were prepared with the pragmatic approach to determine the features of the open and indoor places in parts with intense use potential in the campus. The survey questions were prepared differently for the domains and places in the parts created, and a total of 505 students responded to the survey from different parts. The data obtained from the domain study were evaluated with the statistical analysis method, and results were found related to sufficiency, use durations, accessibility, users’ profile, and use potential of the social and cultural domains in the campus. In accordance with the data obtained from the survey results, recommendations were made in order to change the ANS campus into a domain where users can fulfil their academic, social, art, cultural, and sports needs.