Webinar: Using FOSS for Distance Learning

IT department organised a webinar titled "Using FOSS for Distance Learning" on 30 June 2020. The webinar was delivered by Dr Ahmed Al-Maashri from the Engineering College of Sultan Qaboos University. Dr Ahmed is a senior IEEE member, and he is the founder IEEE Oman Computer Chapter, and the past Chair of IEEE Oman Section.

The main goal of the session was to highlight some of the best free opensource software to be used for online teaching such as Moodle and BigBlueButton. The session was conducted online using Microsoft Teams. Around 30 staff members from the IT, Business, and Engineering Departments as well as from the English Language Centre attended the session.

The session started by welcoming the invited speaker. Afterwards, the resource person highlighted the main topics of the webinar. He discussed the different types of the assessments on Moodle such as using Calculated MCQ questions, and calculated questions. He also discussed BigBlueButton (BBB) as it is used for the virtual classroom environment. He mentioned some examples of programs that can be used or editing videos such as Obsproject and Blender. The last few minutes were spent answering the questions raised by the attendees.

Feedback was collected from members attending the webinar. The majority showed their satisfaction on the arrangements done. On the scale of 5, the average feedback was 3.59. Most of them want similar sessions to be conducted in the future.