Interview with Prof. Dr. Yasemin GULBAHAR (Ankara Team)

In the interview Prof. Dr. Gulbahar was mentioned about a couple of topics. First of all she gave general information about herself. Then she mentioned about the idea of using social media in education and how the idea came as a project topic. As the last point, she touched on the aims and objectives of work packet 3 which was leaded by Ankara team. The work packet 3 was about higher education and social media which studied the patterns and implications of social media usage by higher education institutions in both face-to-face and online teaching environments, namely for blended learning and e-learning.

Interview with Prof. Dr. Gulbahar

Social media is a vibrant research field. The project “SOMECAT” will expand knowledge in two branches with a geographical focus on the participating countries (Russia, Turkey, Germany and Switzerland):

<ol><li>To what extent is and can social media be used for teaching, learning and research?</li><li>
Do and how diaspora groups use social media? If so, for what purposes?</li>
</ol>

Basing on the results, we will combine these two areas of research and investigate “to what extent do diaspora use social media for learning, teaching and research?”. This question has not been researched yet in any systematic way. Taking into account the findings of the previous steps, we will develop and programme a virtual market place for education resources available to diaspora.

Among others the following methods will be used: Quantitative and qualitative analysis, analysis of (server) log files and network analysis, interviews and focus groups, on-line survey. Most of the research will be done from both sides i.e. from the country of origin and destination (diaspora), furthermore cross-country comparisons will be made.

SOMECAT is an ERA.Net.RUS project funded under the 7th EU Research Framework Programme and runs from Oktober 2012 until September 2014.

For further information, please contact the project coordinator Christian Rapp.