Coping with current web evolution: The miniconference approach

Web course instructors usually find it hard to keep the course syllabus up with the current advancement in web technologies. The web is gradually evolving; from widgets to Ajax and from mashups to web services, introducing these new trends next to the essential core topics in any web course need to happen seamlessly. In order to convert the intimidation about learning new web technologies and trends into a motivational incident, this paper presents our experience with structuring and running a student miniconference activity in the Web Applications Engineering course, an undergraduate course taught in the IT department at King Saud University (KSU), Saudi Arabia. This activity was initiated to keep the students and the course curriculum up to date with the current development of the web and to enhance the students' communication and research skills. This paper also describes the approach we have adopted to overcome the limitations of the course syllabus and the management of large number of students participating in the conference.