I am a Ph.D. student at the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology (a.k.a EPET) Program at Michigan State University.

I received my BA from Bogazici University, Istanbul on applied linguistics and went on studying the same subject at METU in Ankara, Turkey . My personal interest and passion for educational technologies, however, started during my undergraduate education and became tangible with my master’s thesis.

My current research interests include, but are not limited to, gaming in education, distance education theories and their practical applications, educational policy and comparative international education research. As a research assistant, I worked with a team of creative individuals on creating an online MMORPG, Zon, which aims to teach Chinese to learners from all over the world. Lately, I am interested in using object-oriented game design platforms (i.e. Microsoft Kodu) as a scaffold for fostering higher order thinking skills (e.g. problem solving, computational thinking, modeling, etc.) in teenagers. To this end, I worked at summer and after school camps in the US and created an academic summer camp teaching kids how to design games in Turkey in 2011.

My full resume can be found here.