The 19th Annual MEITAL Conference on Teaching and Learning Technologies Accelerating Higher Education: Trends and Developments was held this year in a hybrid format. The conference opened online on Wednesday, June 30, 2021. The next day face-to-face and distance workshops were held on the Tel Aviv University campus.
The products and content were uploaded to the conference website for viewing and discussion several days before the conference.
The conference combined a very wide and rich variety of lecturers from Israel and abroad, panels, demonstrations, a sponsorship exhibition, and various digital spaces.
June 30 Conference Program:
Morning meeting with a cup of coffee in our social space
Opening Lecture – Blend but Don’t Break / Curtis J. Bonk, Indiana.
An inspiring keynote delivered by Prof. Sarah Guri-Rosenblit of the Open University on preparing for online teaching in higher education as a necessary condition for the success of online learning. She presented an overview of the main reasons for the reluctance of faculty members to make extensive use of digital technologies, presented successful attempts to prepare for effective online teaching, and gave recommendations for optimal preparation for online teaching in higher education.
Throughout the day, over 60 lectures and panels were held in 14 different sessions that presented applied and research aspects of online teaching: evaluation and measurement in online courses, innovative models in teaching and learning, learning analytics, successes and challenges in the organizational dimension, emotional and social aspects in online learning, privacy and ethics. The online sessions included online math and science assessment led by dozens of exhibitors and participants from Israel, Germany, Italy, Greece, Denmark, England, USA and more.
International Track – This year the international track with partners from abroad was expanded, including an international panel on active learning design, a panel on equality in online learning in collaboration with the Love.dist@nce project, an international session on multicultural education in collaboration with the IAIE conference, and a session on hybrid learning spaces.
A poster exhibition and virtual meetings with conference sponsors allowed experimenting with various tools and platforms.
On the second day July 1, 2021, workshops were held on the Tel Aviv University campus. The day opened with a keynote by Prof. Chee-Kit Looi on the new normal in academia in the light of experience and research in Singapore and Asia.
Four applied workshops to choose from were offered in diverse topics
-Using video leverage in learning
-Introduction to assistive technology-based learning
-Development of virtual tour-based learning products
-Learning design in hybrid spaces
This was followed by a plenary lecture by Ofra Shaltiel from Google on How artificial intelligence contributes to accelerating success and achievements in academia.