Edraak first regional conference took place in Amman, Jordan (my home country). The conference and let’s say as a first conference in the region of the Middle East and North Africa (as claimed) of MOOCs, was fine. There were two main keynote speakers: Dr. Omar Razzaz and Robert Lue.
The venue was at Hyatt Amman Hotel, a 5* hotel located in an active area near the city center. lunch and dinner were really amazing. I wished that coffee would be served all the time, but only for two breaks.
In respect to my session, I think there were a couple of mistakes:
- First of all, there were five speakers. Each was given 10 mins. the actual timing for each was really around 10-12 mins. However, the last one took over 15-17 mins. In fact, that killed the session.
- Second, Despite the importance of that session and the high profiles of the speakers (MIT, TUDelft, UBC, Edraak, & Zayed Univ.), the session was placed to be the last event of the first day!!
- According to the first two mistakes, the number of guests had dropped maybe from 20 to 10 persons..that was really disappointing.
The other sessions were ok. I attended one workshop (Gamification), it was pretty nice. Kudos to Ehab and his colleague.
The follow-up emails from the conference administration were prompt and fast.
Our positive hope for Edraak conference next year is to avoid such mistakes, ask for abstracts, and have more attention towards research.
Dr. techn. Mohammad Khalil 