Figure 1: Role of Knowledge Sharing in Learning
Researchers aim to generate and discover new knowledge (Figure 1). My doctorate degree in Business Administration is equivalent to a PhD in Marketing, and was awarded by the triple-crowned Koç University Graduate School of Business in Istanbul. I gained course design and delivery skills as a lecturer and a professor at TED (abbreviation for Türk Eğitim Derneği, Turkish Education Association) University (TEDU) in Ankara. Figure 1 illustrates how research, scholarship and teaching services work together for knowledge generation and knowledge sharing. Innovation, strategic brand management, sustainability and pricing are my main areas of scholarly interest.
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The main function of universities is to provide environments that inspires, encourages and reinforces learning. Educators connect with the near future of human societies in these venues. I consider being a university professor, a job of a learning experience designer and a guide who helps to gain a perspective and understand the essentials of a subject matter – following Galileo‘s quote, “You cannot teach a person anything, you can only help him find it within.” In the quote I replaced “man” with “a person” for gender neutrality.
Marketing as an administrative science has high degrees of relevance to professional work. In my courses, I embrace this fact from the beginning. Learners are often excited and knowledgeable to some extent, and it is an evolving field. Therefore a university professor of marketing has to keep learning. It gets further complicated. As of 2020s, many people who are registered as university students consider online platforms to learn about the content and to prepare for exams – a proportion of those exams are even available through various means, e.g., behind paywalls. Hence the needed effort to inspire learners and encourage them to engage is dynamic.
In 2017, I started my academic career and accepted the offer at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at TED University (TEDU) for an assistant professor position, which became a reality only in early 2022, due to some bureaucratic obstacles.* In that five-year period, I was requested to offer a variety of courses – resulting in some serious teaching load. Yet building an infrastructure for learning is a responsibility with social importance. Indeed, being a professor comes with responsibilities for human development. In a few paragraphs I will briefly describe my approach, and the courses I have designed and/ or delivered.
Quality of education can be measured through progress in critical thinking and freedom of expression. Teaching is then not a simple transfer of knowledge, yet motivating an interest, providing essentials to build knowledge on, and offer a perspective. With that, I am passionate to improve the education experience of learners in my courses. Learning begins and ends with respect, within a positive learning environment within the course, and through integrating sustainable development goals into course content and assessments.
My teaching approach is science and evidence based, connected to research and scholarship at its core. I consider myself as an active learning enthusiast. Opportunities to contribute to growth of learners and inspire ethical leadership are exciting. I believe, respect, accountability and transparency are three key principles. Integrating contemporary topics and research findings then improve the quality of sessions. In designing coursework and assessments, I follow Bloom’s model as a guideline, in Figure 2 below.
At TEDU I delivered Social Media Marketing (BA465), Brand Management (BA464), and New Product Development (BA462). Due to the request of the Dean, I developed Digital Marketing for Education Institutions (MEI505), and delivered to a class of professional educators in the Management in Educational Institutions Master of Arts program. Other courses I delivered includes mandatory courses; Production and Operations Management (BA305), Research Methods (BA401, ECON401, PSIR401) and Principles of Marketing (BA301). In addition to these courses, I supervised fifteen graduation projects in Business Administration (BA402) and one in Economics (ECON402). In anonymous course evaluation surveys, my average rating is about 4.5 out of 5.0 at TEDU. Notably, in MEI505, the rating was 4.89 out of 5.00, assessed by professional educators, including teachers with over thirty years of experience. I find these as consistent indicators of satisfaction with learning experiences.
I joined Koç University in 2024 as a research-oriented lecturer, a custom-designed innovative position that has a long-term approach to develop faculty members who may excel on both research and teaching, instead of a simple classification of professors as research-only faculty and lecturers as teaching-only faculty. I found the approach highly valuable, and accepted to participate as one of the first such faculty members for a year, and took a temporary leave from as approved by the University Board at TEDU, indirectly providing support to the initiative. At Koç University, I got the responsibility to deliver courses on Innovation Management and Strategic Brand Management and supervise the marketing module of the Capstone Project for the Business Administration program, along with professors of Strategy and Operations Management.
Here are some of the initiatives I was part of, related to course delivery. I highly appreciate the role of universities for societies in providing a robust venue for learning for university students and professors alike. I collaborate with Nazlı Wasti Pamuksuz (Professor of Management, ODTU) and Özlem Atay Özkanlı (Professor of Management, Ankara University), on a teaching case about new product development and brand management, expected to be available in 2025. I developed learning.love as an instrument to deliver recorded videos during the pandemic in a more privacy-sensitive platform, and then to continued developing it to support active learning in the post-pandemic period. I pilot tested Coursera integration in one of my courses at TEDU and also offered the first Vertically Integrated Projects course in Turkiye, which is also one of the earliest in Europe as part of an initiative for Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education. I consider all these as an indication of success in my contribution to help develop a better future.
Figure 2: An Illustration of Bloom’s Taxonomy
Here’s an Illustration of Bloom’s Taxonomy that I made. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution license, free to share, reproduce and use it, as long as you attribute it to the learners.love.
* “[A]mong college professors, there is a saying, ‘A handshake is good enough between businessmen. But when your university’s dean promises you something, get it in writing'” (Dixit and Nalebuff, 1993, p.151)
Reference
Dixit, Avinash K., and Barry J. Nalebuff. Thinking strategically: The competitive edge in business, politics, and everyday life. WW Norton & Company, 1993.