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IKU Head of The Board of Trustees Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver’s Message Regarding the IKU Agenda - XXIV

Istanbul Kültür University (IKU) Head of the Board of Trustees Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver published a message regarding the IKU agenda, which has changed with the New Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

My Dear Kültür Family,

First of all, it was very meaningful for me to be together with my colleagues, student council, club presidents and representatives at the opening ceremony of the new academic year held on Wednesday, 7 October 2020. Our opening ceremony, which we held by keeping our auditorium capacity limited, gave us all hope for the future. On this occasion, I wish the 2020-2021 academic year to continue with health, peace, and success for our whole family.

My Dear Kültür Family,

One of the most important developments of the fall semester in which we will continue with distance education is the activating our digital education solution CATS Version 3. I believe that CATS V3, which is designed with an education and communication friendly infrastructure, especially the meeting feature that allows live lessons, will also make a difference in student satisfaction. CATS V3, whose in-house launch and training was completed last week, reached remarkable statistics with more than two thousand courses and nearly 10 thousand individual users in one day. Our digital education solution will undertake a very important mission not only in the fall semester, but also in the future of our university. At this point, I would like to contribute to the development of CATS V3 with the constructive feedback of CATS V3 from all members of Kültür

Another study for the sustainability of education in the 2020-2021 academic year was our hybrid lecture halls opened at our Ataköy Campus. It is a great pleasure to be able to offer our students an efficient digital learning environment, including class participation, with our hybrid lecture halls that offer our academic staff lessons in classroom climate with the camera and smart board applications installed in the lecture hall. Our hybrid classroom technologies will be the biggest assistant of our students and academicians together with CATS V3 in the fall semester with its  equipment that will ensure learning efficiency. I hope that our hybrid classes, which our Foreign Languages Department has started to use for our preparatory students, will be productive for all our university and students.

We faced different realities in this period of time when we understood more clearly that digitalization is not a result but a process. One of them is digital inequality. The cost created by the technologies required for education is forcing the conditions of many families and educators across the nation. At this point, we will start a solidarity initiative against digital inequality as the Kültür family with the cooperation of İKÜMED and KÜMED. A humble contribution we will make means a lot for this project. We need solidarity for the future of our children and youth in order to repair the social dilemmas created by digital inequality without further growth. I sincerely believe that every member of the Kültür family will support our campaign with their sincere contributions, regardless of quantity. You can get information about the contribution process to our solidarity project to be carried out under the coordination of İKÜMED and KÜMED, which we set out with the message "We are stronger together", from the İKÜMED portal on our website. It is important that we can develop the initiative we started as Kültür family together. At this point, I would like you to contact İKÜMED (ikumed@iku.edu.tr) about your opinions, suggestions and all the points you wonder about our campaign, and thank you in advance for your support.

It is our common wish that the 2020-2021 academic year, which we have met with many different experiences, will end with healthiness, success and happiness for the Kültür Family. We have a lot to achieve together.

Hope to see you on better days.

Dr. Bahar Akıngüç Günver
Head of the Board of Trustees