Founded in 1996, Yeditepe University offers an education that is necessary for people of the age of information. The mission to use the science of the day and the necessities of the society to provide high quality education to build a better world now more than ever requires a leap forward in educational design and structure as much reskilling and upskilling academic and administrative staff.
The recent Covid Pandemic showed us the world’s instability and looming dangers of further pandemics. Therefore, the need to be online/remote has become a necessity and virtually a reality of the future. Not only the contingency of emergency situations that might be experienced in the coming years, but also the digital transformation in learning environments leading to the hybrid models has become an inevitable fact in higher education. In fact, such models offer a great extent of benefits and opportunities to educational institutions to students, faculty, and administrative staff and even to the support service workers.
While traditional classroom offers guidance, face to face interaction, social growth, and many more pedagogical benefits; the online version also has its own unique advantages. Allowing learners to become independent, seeking knowledge rather than simply receiving, developing curiosity further and ability to continuously adapt and learn are all proven benefits of the ubiquitous learning models that online platforms allow. In addition, transforming some classes online relieves university from physical classroom pressure, limitations. As well as adding flexibility for both faculty and students from commuting. Whether it be a hybrid model, which is the ideal state, or a fully remote-online model in case of states of emergencies; we need to heavily invest in making our educational program, structure, faculty, and students all very net-savvy and able to fully invest in both forms of higher education.
At YU-LEARNT we have been working on various models to support our faculty and administrative staff, students, and alumni. Starting from July 2021 the agreement our university signed with an online learning platform, Coursera, has began, and both our students and staff has enrolled in various courses to advance their skills in several domains and/or gained new skill sets and competencies, earning their respective certificates. We hope that such certificate trainings will continue to help our graduates to stand out in a competitive job market and continue to provide them with the job-ready skills. As for the faculty and administrative staff, we are beginning to introduce a wide range of courses on innovative teaching and learning methods, creative assessment and evaluation approaches, communication, and basic digital media use techniques to give our colleagues leverage to advance their professional and personal skills and competencies. The "Educator's Education" Modules are set in motion and began to be filmed. YULearn Moodle Educations are online and projects on Communicational Skills, Advisor's Handbook, Office Program Educations, Academic Writing, and many others are getting prepared.
Sincerely,
Prof. Dr. Berrin Yanıkkaya
Coordinator
YU-LEARNT