In addition to the education it provides at world standards in terms of quality, Ibn Haldun University (IHU) also impresses with the methods it develops in educational technologies with its capacity and adaptation to produce solutions to sudden developments. IHU is one of the fastest higher education institutions in adapting the online education and preparing the infrastructure for it.
With the decision of the Council of Higher Education to suspend all education process on campuses, as a measure against COVID-19, until the end of the spring semester, the whole education process in the university's preparatory, undergraduate and graduate programs continued uninterruptedly. In this process, the success of Ibn Haldun University, which outperformed Turkey's standards in online instruction, was also recorded in figures.
At IHU, where Canvas was used as the online learning management system, the first data on online learning started to be obtained as of March. Accordingly, with the transition to online education, the School of Languages held a total of 1251 hours in 1529 sessions, and the other faculties and departments conducted a total of 1050 hours in 787 sessions of online lectures.
In Ibn Haldun University, where all students attend classes in online lecture sessions of 10-15 people, excluding university courses, an average of 11 students actively participated in each online class during the online education process. In addition, 1150 of these online lecture sessions were recorded in the system, and approximately 380 GB of course recordings were created.
Another important factor recorded in the success of IHU in the online education process is that all classes start on time. In this efficiency, the meticulousness of our academics and students and their easy adaptation to the online environment played an important role. As a matter of fact, online classes have been tested in the past months and necessary straining has been given to our academics and students.
IHU Library was not affected by the online process. All research and course resources and materials continue to be presented to the relevant people digitally.
The Information Services Department, which establishes and develops the infrastructure of this entire online education process, continues its efforts to ensure that the system runs smoothly and that lessons and extracurricular activities are performed without any malfunctions. Within the department, a solution is produced by instantly responding to the questions of all students, academics and administrative staff.
In addition to the educational processes at our university, culture, art and sports events, certificate programs and psychosocial support services were also brought online. In this process, Honor Program, Art Culture Sports (SKS) Department and newly established Psychosocial Support Group activities are carried out online. In many activities carried out amid COVID-19 measures at IHU, from chess tournaments to discussions on current issues, from reading groups to workshops, from fairy tale reading hours to poetry recitation, the Zoom online meeting application is mostly used as an online platform. In this sense, our administrative units and students organizing these activities held 880 hours of extra-curricular activities and meetings in 1744 sessions.
IHU, which pursues a highly effective and proactive policy in online education, as well as the measures it takes in the COVID-19 pandemic in its campuses and dormitories, has achieved significant success with the working hours of the employees, online activities and psychosocial support activities.
The COVID-19 Coordination Board was established at IHU in order to adapt to the situation developing amid the COVID-19 disaster, to share the decisions taken by Council of Higher Education regarding the novel coronavirus with our academics in a healthy and quick manner and to coordinate the practices in this respect. In addition, IHU has been one of the institutions that directed its staff to work from home, in order to eliminate the risks of working together from the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. In-unit and inter-units meetings were also conducted online. Accordingly, 125 hours of meetings were held in 180 sessions.
Psychosocial Support Group was established in cooperation with the Psychotherapy Application and Research Center (İPAM) and the Guidance and Psychotherapy Counseling Application and Research Center (REDAM) within Ibn Haldun University, in order to eliminate the psychological problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, to take care of our students' academic success as well as their psychological health. The unit started online support to student, academics and other members. In addition, informative documents prepared on stress, anxiety and other issues were presented to the attention of the members of IHU and the public on social media.
