Faculty Profiles

Secil Caskurlu is a postdoctoral research associate in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology at Michigan State University. Her main research focuses on the factors that impact student outcomes and how to integrate them into the design, development and evaluation phases as they relate to learning environments, experiences, technologies and the like. She is also interested in integrating computational thinking into K-12 education. More specifically, she is interested in teacher competencies required for meaningful integration of computational thinking into K-12 to foster student outcomes while they are engaged in computational thinking-related tasks. As for teaching, she has designed, developed and taught various face-to-face, blended and fully online graduate courses focusing on different topics ranging from instructional design to advanced research in instructional design and technology and online teaching and learning. From a practical perspective, she has been doing consultation work for faculty and graduate students in different fields with a focus on instructional design, competency-based education as well as online teaching and learning.

Research Interests

• Online teaching and learning
• Community of Inquiry framework
• Competency-based education and assessment
• Computational thinking integration in K-12
• Application of systematic reviews in educational research
• Assessment of instructional designer competencies
• Applying principles of cognitive science in online learning
• Human computer interaction

Selected Publications

• Caskurlu, S., Richardson, J.C., Alamri, H. A., Chartier, K., Farmer, T. S., Janakiraman, S., Strait, M., Yang, M. (accepted). Cognitive load and online course quality: Insights from instructional designers in a higher education context. British Journal of Educational Technology.
• Caskurlu, S., Maeda, Y., Richardson, J. C., & Lv, J. (2020). Teaching presence in relation to students’ satisfaction and learning in the online environment: A narrative synthesis and meta-analysis. Computers and Education.
• Guzey, S.S., Caskurlu, S., Kozan, K. (2020). Integrated STEM education approaches and student learning. In C. Johnson, M. Mohr-Schroeder, T. Moore, & L. English (Eds.). Handbook of research on STEM education.
• Exter, M., Ashby, I., & Caskurlu, S. (2019). Elusive expectations for a novel program design: Contrast between program intentions and student recruitment and retention. The Journal of Competency-Based Education.
• Caskurlu, S. (2018). Confirming the subdimensions of teaching, social, and cognitive presences: A construct validity study. The Internet and Higher Education, 39, 1-12.
• Caskurlu, S. & Ashby, I. (2018). Integrated learning and assessment system in competency-based higher education program. International Journal of Learning Technology, 13 (4), 352-368.
• Kozan, K. & Caskurlu, S. (2018). On the Nth presence for the Community of Inquiry Framework. Computers and Education, 122, 104-118.
• Ashby, I., Caskurlu, S., & Exter, M. (2018). Toward role profiles of faculty at a new competency-based transdisciplinary program. The Journal of Competency-Based Education. doi: 10.1002/cbe2.1059
• Richardson, J.C., Maeda, Y., Lv, J, Caskurlu, S. (2017). Social presence in relation to students’ satisfaction and learning in the online environment: A narrative synthesis and meta-analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 402-417. (Note: All authors contributed equally to this manuscript and authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order)
• Richardson, J.C., Koehler, A., Besser, E., Caskurlu, S., Lim, J. & Mueller, C. (2015). Conceptualizing and investigating instructor presence in online learning environments. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(3), 256-297.