AUS hosts second Blackboard Middle East Adoption Day

The Faculty Development Center (FDC) at American University of Sharjah (AUS) hosted the second UAE Blackboard Academic Adoption event on campus, today, October 19, 2016. Approximately 30 selected faculty members and administrators from different institutions within the UAE attended the event.

The Blackboard Academic Adoption event was opened by Dr. Leland Blank, Interim Provost and Chief Academic Officer, covered many topics relevant to Blackboard champions, academic developers, instructional designers and others involved in championing the use of Blackboard in institutions of higher education in the Middle East.

"This is a very important event because it brings in a combination of the experience and success stories that the Blackboard Middle East client team has plus those of the faculty and administrators' experiences that we can learn from and use in the classroom,"said Dr. Cindy Gunn, Director of FDC.

The event addressed key themes of educational Blackboard adoption including, recognizing academic adoption success, examples of academic adoption best practices, Blackboard Adoption client success stories and more.

Keynote Speaker Emad Alomari, Customer Success Advocate, Blackboard ME, also elaborated on the objectives of the event and said, "The goal of the event is to provide members with inspirational ideas about how Blackboard could be utilized from an academic point of view to increase the academic adoption of Blackboard in institutions."

Other speakers at the event included: Dr. Alan Masson, Senior Manager for International Costumer Success, Blackboard ME; Walid Alieldin, Course Management System Administrator,AUS; Dr. Najeh Jisrawi and Dr. H. M. Elmehdi from University of Sharjah; Dr. Bruce Gatenby, Assistant Professor of Writing Studies, AUS; and Sarah Whittaker, Project Manager, Higher Colleges of Technology; Dr. Cindy Gunn, Director of FDC.

The event concluded with a question and answer session and an open discussion panel.