Open Academy is 4 years old – Behice Funda – Microsoft Turkey

The education platform Open Academy established by Microsoft in 2012 publishing at http://www.acikakademi.com/ missioning to empower individuals and corporates to succeed more, has celebrated its fourth year. We discussed the success of the platform has achieved with Behice Funda, Marketing Manager for Software Development Technologies Platform at Microsoft Turkey.

Target is to reach one million people.

Behice Funda mentioned about the fourth year celebrations of the platform and stated that “We are aiming to reach one million individuals by our Open Academy platform within the next five years” and continued:

“As Microsoft Turkey, we desire Turkey to increase its share in the global informatics market and catch the digital transformation and achieve a further step to transform into an informatic center. For this purpose, as Microsoft Turkey, we have accomplished the Open Academy as a social sense responsibility, and we are targeting to teach online code writing to individuals at all ages starting from primary schools. Our website http://www.acikakademi.com/ has already become the widest software development training platform with its 200 thousand members. We are content and happy with the line we have reached and will continue our studies in this respect with all our might.”

Behice Funda explained that “43 % of the members of the Open Academy are at 19-23 years of age. Furthermore, we have trained 400 students in our Summer School programs for one month since 2013” and ended her words mentioning:

“We broadcasted these training programs live on the internet to an audience which has already reached the number of 172 thousand individuals. Within the framework of our University collaborations, we have extended to 32 different universities in 22 cities where we united the youngsters with technology. The female participants of the Open Academy are  20 %. The first year, this figure was 5 %. The followers of the Open Academy are at 19-24 years of age. The trainees mostly come from Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir while Diyarbakır is within the first 15 cities.”

Training videos last longer than 110 hours.

On the online training programs, members can find answers to their questions such as, what is an algorithm, what is object-oriented programming and what are the basics of game programming. Furthermore, members can communicate with each other utilizing the established forums. On Open Academy participants can train themselves on C#, Unity, ASP.NET, KODU, Basic Programming, web applications, phone and computer applications. The target of the Open Academy is to reach one million members within the next five years.

Please feel free to watch the interview we have achieved with Behice Funda, Marketing Manager for Software Development Technologies Platform at Microsoft Turkey below video in Turkish.