Murat Turk
The University of Oklahoma - Download Profile/Vita

I am a doctoral student in the Instructional Psychology and Technology program at the University of Oklahoma as a Fulbright scholar. I taught English in various skills and at various levels as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructor at college level in Turkey for 14 years and I am also an author of three English grammar & vocabulary test books which are currently sold in Turkey. My research interests as a graduate student are multifaceted and diverse, just like culture, learning and technology themselves. In particular, I am interested in flipped instructional model integrated within EFL settings to promote language learner motivation, learner satisfaction, critical thinking skills and language learning achievement. Flipped instructional model with all its pedagogy and tools offers new learning and change opportunities for learners in all content areas including foreign language education, and the instructional design process based on flipped learning model can bring about revolutionary changes in various educational contexts and settings.  

Since I started teaching in 2003 as a graduate of Middle East Technical University with a CGPA of 4.00, ranking first among 4000 graduates, I have seen and taught numerous classrooms with various types of learners within the EFL settings and I have learned that learning is a social phenomenon that occurs optimally through communication, collaboration, interaction and sharing within a flexible learning culture where every single individual has the confidence, security and comfort to build up their own knowledge and test it against their community members and enjoy the concomitant shared or distributed system of intelligence. This is exactly what I wish to achieve in this STC representative role. Through close collaboration, cooperation and communication with the graduate students from all AECT divisions, I am going to create a knowledge-building community in which every single member will be engaged in and responsible for initiating research-based projects and similar other academic endeavors that will incrementally contribute to this innovative change process. I also have a dream of establishing a virtual community with all AECT member graduate students in the field who will meet synchronously and asynchronously to share their change-oriented and system-based ideas, projects, and research inquiries with one another.

I am of the strong opinion that technology could mean something to us only if we can come together and share with each other for the common good. I am looking forward to getting this position in this great family of AECT and you can be sure that I will do my best to live up to the expectations of this distinguished community. Hence, I hereby ask for your vote for the STC representative position to help me accomplish these goals and ambitions that will serve the entire community of graduate students in this field.