International Arab Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education

Lebanese International University had the privilege to host one of the greatest influential educational conferences in the Arab world that target higher education. For the eighth time this conference has been pioneering to find solutions for the problems faced by higher education in the Arab World. Researchers, experts and scientists from around the Arab world studied issues like promoting employability for university graduates, how we prepare them for the work place, how to ensure maximum learning, how we incorporate technology and E-learning, and many other issues that assure quality and accreditation in higher education. The audience this conference targeted was people of high stalk like university presidents, deans and directors of Quality Assurance and Accreditation offices, people within the research community, but how can a university student benefit from such conference?

Dr. Wafaa Ahmed Zahran of Menoufia University mentioned in her research on how accreditation changed and improved learning in their medical school, that one step they took in the road to reach accreditation was to let their students know what their rights are and what they are supposed to benefit from during the time spent in university. This awareness is exactly why university students should attend this conference, which can help them assure the quality of their own education.

On the other hand higher education does not differ much from lower education systems. As a teacher in training I found it very inspiring to hear people who devoted their lives to improve education talk about their findings. We both aim for individuals that are able to survive the outside world, in the case of higher education in the work place. The term employability was repeated often during the conference. Dr. Narimane Hadj-Hamou the founder and CEO of CLICKS in Dubai-UAE spoke on how important it is to expose students to the workplace and allow them to experience situations through hands on activities where they can apply the skills and knowledge they learn in classes. She also spoke about effective pedagogy that supports employability, which refers to the strategies that educators use to teach students skills that make them competent in the workplace. Those innovative pedagogical techniques might include metacognition skills that teaches students to think about their own thinking which is the highest level of thinking according to bloom's taxonomy. Dr. Hadj-Hamou also mentioned how important it is to teach through technology as she said that "students might know how to use technology, but do not necessary know how to learn it".

All of this brings us back to what we have learned during many of our TD courses, and is another proof that we can also reach quality assurance in our schools through these very own techniques.

Finally, I think it is important to note that after attending this conference and listening to all these great speakers, it makes me very proud to know that these people who belong to the Arab world have such impact in the field of education. In addition, this conference made me realize how blessed we are to have a university like the LIU that endorses education in all its forms, and is always looking for methods and ways to better the journey of education to yield individuals who are professional and can tackle the outside world with no complications.