Learning Technologies Research and Development Unit

Hello, I am Associate Professor Sinan Aydın. I am working as a lecturer at Anadolu University, Open Education Faculty. At the same time, I work as the Deputy Dean of the Open Education Faculty and continue my duty as the director for the Learning Technologies Research and Development (R&D) Unit. This is a unit where the course materials of Anadolu University open education system are produced and managed. In particular, it is a unit where both the learning management system and the software we call the Inventory Tracking System are developed. The history of our unit actually dates back to 4 decades. After the establishment of the Open Education system in 1982, our unit was established in 1989 as the Computer Aided Education Unit. Of course, there was no internet in those years, but it was established as a unit where software was developed to enable students to receive education over computers. In 16 Computer Aided Education Centers, in different cities of Turkey, students were provided with learning and many different materials such as practice exams. Then, in 1999, with the introduction of the internet into our lives, we started to use these technologies. In particular, practice exams are the first service to meet students over the internet. Later, many different services such as e-practice and e-television were added to this. Finally, all of these services are combined into a learning management system. Today, we offer our students 15 different learning materials from our learning management system called Anadolum E-Kampüs. Of course, these are learning materials prepared in the structure that our students need. These include lecture videos, e-books, and audio summaries. We offer many different materials to our students. Actually, we have many different goals and productions, but to summarize briefly, live courses are one of them. Live courses are one of our services that students have been in high demand for recently. It is a study in which faculty members now offer education services directly to our students both in our laboratories and from different places. Apart from that, we have a new appointment online exam service. This is a new service that students can use, especially to get to know the exam environment before the actual exam and to measure how much they have learned. Apart from this, we are actually trying to develop smart learning management systems. You know, in our age, the importance of artificial intelligence and the effects of computers on people's learning process are undeniable. Therefore, such studies continue in our unit. In particular, we are working on a number of different applications such as determining where there is a disruption in the learning process of the student and what kind of improvements can be made in order to be useful to the student. We expect to see the results of these in the coming years. In my opinion, one of the greatest contributions of the ÖTAG Unit or Anadolu University open education system to our students is the experience of lifelong learning. Because the learning materials offered by Anadolu University's open education system provide the experience of self-learning to students. If we think about it, the learning process never ends within the scope of lifelong learning. Employees need to constantly improve their skills. Therefore, in this career planning process, learning and e-learning gains are very important and we consider them as gains that contribute a lot to our students in their future lives. Apart from this, Anadolu University is an institution that uses the most student labor force in Turkey as far as I know. Our unit benefits greatly from our students. We benefit greatly from the young generation in the production and digitization of these learning materials. They can also turn these gains into their own advantage in business life by adding them to their résumés later. Therefore, it is possible for our students to gain many useful experiences at Anadolu University.
The Quality Ambassadors Project is a project that launched in 2016 and was developed in order to present the contributions made for the development of the system by our students. In this project, especially the sense of belonging of the students develops a lot. Because it is very important for them to contribute to the system and report the problems they see in the system. This project continues as a project that both benefits our students and us. Learning Technologies Research and Development Unit (ÖTAG) is the unit where learning materials are developed. Therefore, we produce materials for our students in many different laboratories here. We have 13 studios. We shoot video in these 13 studios. We have studios here where faculty members come and prepare course materials. Apart from this, we have 2 dubbing studios and many shooting studios. As you know, especially in terms of television, we have studios where we shoot the television programs of the Anadolu University open education system. We are trying to produce the best quality learning material for our students with the professional videos developed here. First of all, I would like to tell our students about 40 years of experience in the open education system about choosing Anadolu University. Because in this way, our students have the opportunity to access the quality learning content that Anadolu University has. In fact, another important point is this: While studying in the Anadolu University open education system, they can enroll in a program in the open education system within the scope of the second university. In fact, this enables them to complete the missing parts for their own career development in the future and to obtain a second area of expertise. In this sense, I recommend our students to evaluate the second university. As Anadolu University's open education system, we wish success to all our students who will take the university exam. We want to see you all among us.