Organizing and Hosting Virtual PPTELL 2020 During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper aims at answering the “how” questions about organizing and hosting an online conference during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 3rd International Pan-Pacific Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (PPTELL) Conference and Critical Thinking Meeting (hereafter PPTELL 2020) hosted from June 29 to July 1, 2020, on Zoom is the example conference used in this paper to illustrate the challenges and approaches adopted before, during and after the conference. The mentioned conference was supposed to take place physically at the University of North Texas during the same period but was transformed into an online virtual conference due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. It was an urgent decision, along with many unknown situations, such as the attendees’ different time zones and “Zoombombing.” A three-staged and target-action process guided the preparation and organization of the online conference, i.e., pre-, during, and post-conference. According to the live meeting results and the post-conference survey, PPTELL 2020 has earned a reputation from its quality and the satisfaction of the participants and attendees. Therefore, the experience shared in the current paper seems to be a good reference for the organizers and hosts of international conferences.

Keywords

• online conference
• covid-19
• zoombombing
• pptell 2020 and critical thinking meeting