EESTEC Magazine Vol 34 2014/1 | Page 14

International Projects EESTEC Online Seminar Text: Edina Livnjak, Online Seminar Coordinator Photographs: Online Seminar Team Online Seminar is relatively young project and it is still developing. However, from the very beginning it had huge potential to grow into something useful and valuable not only for EESTECers but for everyone all around the world. The Online Seminar project provides students with a new platform for learning. Most students are interested in deepening their knowledge in a specific subject but a big majority of them finds it difficult to achieve proficiency relying on courses delivered by universities. The initial idea of our seminars was to familiarize students effectively with their selected topics and allow them to interact with practical problems. While listening to lecturer attendees had an opportunity to ask questions in order to fully comprehend the topic. That way the quality of the information sharing is being enhanced. Every Online Seminar has a goal of focusing on a distinct topic and seminars are delivered by an expert on the field. This year Online Seminar Team focused on contacting potential lecturers for the next seminars. We wanted to provide our attendees with the best quality lectures about up-todate topics. After talking to Mehmet Sencer Karadayi from Ankara, Turkey we decided to make together HTML5 seminar. We were glad to open the next chapter with this topic and a new lecturer. Second and third seminars were about Android Development. Our lecturer for that topic, Konrad Gorski from Gdansk, Poland, suggested splitting this topic into two seminars because it was important to start from beginner’s level and then finish with more advanced level. In that case anyone, even without previous knowledge could join and learn about Android Development. We accepted that idea and started preparing two seminars. Seminars about both topics were very successful and a lot of people watched it and we got a great feedback from our participants. One of the great things about Online Seminars is that if you miss one of them, you can always watch later via EESTEC Youtube channel. want to include topics from every part of engineering. Another idea which we plan on implementing is to include soft-skills seminars. We will do our best to achieve these goals but we also need your help. The Team is always looking for new lecturers so if you are interested in sharing your knowledge with other students, please contact Online Seminar Team. If you are having doubts about applying for lecturer’s position, you can read what one of our lecturers, Konrad Gorski, said about this project: „I really enjoyed being part of this year’s Online Seminars. I think it’s a great example of a modern approach to education. Not only it points the students to technologies that are currently trending, but also leverages one of the biggest benefits of the Web - free access. We’re living in a global environment and the physical distance should not be an issue for education anymore. It is wonderful to see people inspired by the talks and creating new things based on the knowledge I tried to convey.“ Edina Livnjak - Online Seminar Team Coordinator Success in this year represents a great motivation for the next year. We have various ideas and plans how to improve this project and make it a part of every students’ studying routine. Previous seminars were mostly about Computer Science topics but in future we 14