Sabancı University Education Conference
The idea of the internal education conference emerged in 2017 from a few instructors in the Foundations Development Directorate (FDD), after realizing the need for a sharing platform for good practices in education taking place on campus. Prior to that, many of us at SU were successfully applying effective teaching models but did not have any opportunity to share the good practices with the rest of the campus community. On multiple occasions, we would find out about each other’s practices just by chance or at an external education-related conference, where we ran into each other.
Since 2014, large first-year University Courses offered by FDD have been adapting active learning / collaborative learning methods, some of which were reformed with a student-centered course design. Active learning classrooms with round tables and whiteboards were newly designed and built for these courses. Various educational technology tools have been incorporated and heavily used in these courses. Thus, FDD instructors have extensive experiences and resources for innovative teaching approaches as well as positive outcomes to share.
As a naturally emerging leader of innovative education at our University, FDD took the initiative to organize the first Internal Education Conference in May 2018, for which more than 100 SU academics from all faculties and units attended. The aim of the two-day Conference was to create a place for all educators, researchers, and graduate teaching assistants to share models of innovative teaching/learning practices taking place at SU. The Conference in turn serves as a place for brainstorming our needs in keeping high standards of our education, creating more professional development opportunities, and initiating a long-lasting educational support community on campus. We invited two keynote speakers from other prominent Turkish universities (Prof. Kurşat Çağlıtay of Middle East Technical University and Prof. Murat Sozer of Koç University) to our inaugural Conference. As a result of the first Conference, we created SU Commons for Teaching and Learning − a website for sharing resources, upcoming events, news, and discussion forums for exchanging ideas among the SU educator community.
Since then, FDD has been organizing the Internal Education Conference annually, with various themes of high interest and prominent keynote speakers invited from Turkey and internationally. The annual Conference has contributed tremendously to creating and nurturing the SU educational community, improving the quality of education that we provide to our students, and increasing the recognition of SU as a leader in innovative education among Turkish universities.
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