Strategies for successfully moving courses online

Dr Yaz El-Hakim, SEDA

Yaz El Hakim founded VerifyEd in 2019 to combine two passions; education and blockchain. VerifyEd is a new platform using blockchain to issue immutable, secure digital degree certificates and micro-credentials. As CEO, Yaz is the driving force behind VerifyEd’s mission to revolutionise the way educational achievements are issued, stacked and shared. Prior to founding VerifyEd, Yaz spent six years working internationally with other educational technology companies including Aula, Kortext and RefME. 

Before venturing into EdTech Yaz began his career in academia, where he held a number of positions over 13 years. After starting lecturer at the University of Chichester, Yaz went on to hold positions including Director of Learning and Teaching and Director of Student Engagement at the University of Winchester. 

Yaz is also an active member of a number of academic communities, most recently as co-chair for the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA). Yaz has also presented at a number of international conferences and is widely published, having recently released a book ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education; Theory into Practice’, and contributing to a number of research papers. Over his career, Yaz has led/co-led over £1.1 million worth of research projects.

Ian Wairua, Strathmore University 

Ian Wairua is the Associate Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya. His interest is in emerging social and education technologies, as well as Japanese language and culture.

Ian has 30 years of experience in education working at both university and secondary school sectors. He also spent some years working for the Japanese embassy in Nairobi where he helped run their education and communication programs targeting six countries Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Eritrea and the Seychelles. He has done consultancies for module development for the Open University, London.

Ian was the founding Secretary-General of the Japanese Language Teachers Association - Kenya (JALTAK) and a past Vice-Chairman, and a board member of Synonyms, an organization for language experts based in Kenya.

Dr Maryam Jaffar Ismail, State University of Zanzibar (SUZA)

Dr Ismail is the Dean of the School of Education at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) in Tanzania. She obtained her PhD in Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) and an M. Ed in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Monash University, Australia. She is a senior lecturer and a teacher educator with over 20 years’ experience in Second/Foreign language teaching, including English language Teaching (ELT), Teaching Kiswahili to Speakers of Other Languages (TEKSOL), Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) and Special Education and Differentiated Instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context.

She is active in several collaborative projects: Partnership for Enhanced and Blended Learning (PEBL), 5KM Radius Initiative, Transformation, Language, Education and Development (TRANSLED), Enhancing Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Sustainability in Higher Education in Africa (EEIS-HEA), STEM for Success Zanzibar (S4SZ) where Kio-Kits and drone technology were introduced to some selected secondary school teachers. She is also part of Digital Education in Africa network to explore the intractable challenges in tertiary education and how the digital might be used to address these challenges. The network involves Nigeria; Zanzibar, Tanzania; Kampala, Uganda; and Edinburgh, UK.