Two webinars were organized on July 3, 2012. The organizing team was comprised by Saurabh Sinha, IEEE Region 8 Vice-Chair: Technical Activities and Niovi Pavlidou, IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for CE (Educational Activities Subcommittee (EASC)). The events were technically supported by George Michael, Electronic Communications Coordinator, IEEE R8. The webinars were quite well disseminated through the e-Notice service and, by George Papadopoulos, through the R8 Continuing Education Forum email lists.
The first webinar, entitled “Fuzzy Logic Systems in Educational Assessment”, was intended to all members of IEEE Education Society in R8, to the Section Chairs of R8, and to Region 8 EA officers. Niovi Pavlidou welcomed the participants and introduced various subcommittees relating to technical activities, with emphasis on educational activities in Region 8. The central speaker of the webinar was Dr Riadh Besbes, an educational supervisor for secondary schools in Tunisia. After the presentation a questions and answers slot was offered to the participants. The duration of the webinar was one hour, the lectures and discussion slots as a whole. The event was organized on WebEx facilities and the attendance was considered as moderate.
Some technical problems with the voice quality have been referred. A main problem to be noticed is the non-availability of toll-free telephone number provisions with some Region 8 countries (for example, Serbia and Montenegro) and the attendees from these areas who joined the session were disappointed. The VoIP connection will strongly improve the success of the seminars and this feedback has been coordinated with the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Information Management (MGA-IM) team by the continuing education coordination for Region 8.
The second webinar was supposed to start half an hour later. The title of the webinar was “Introduction to Electric Vehicles”, and the speaker was Vladimir Katic, IEEE Serbia and Montenegro Section. It was intended for members of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) in Region 8, to the Section Chairs in Region 8 and to Region 8 EA officers. Though, even if the attendance was considered as satisfactory, the speaker was not able to use the toll-free phone line, because WebEx does not support it for Serbia & Montenegro.
After some efforts performed by the organizers and the speaker (including the use of other parallel platforms – Skype – in parallel to WebEx), Niovi Pavlidou apologized for the inconvenience, and closed the session promising that the VTS affiliated webinar will be offered again soon.
Prof. Niovi Pavlidou
IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for Continuing Education
IEEE Greece Section Membership Development Officer