Attending the ITS 2010 conference was a great learning experience for me. On the first day I attended the tutorial on the seven common pitfalls of statistics and learned a great deal on some of the common practices in the use of statistics in conducting research. Since I come across many of those issues myself in analyzing data, I found the tips quite useful.

The next day I presented my paper entitled, "Leveraging a Domain Ontology to Increase the Quality of Feedback in an Intelligent Tutoring System" in the ill-defined domains track. I was delighted to receive such a healthy response. Questions by the audience challenged my work and helped me think of new issues to address, while at the same time feedback from the attendees gave me greater confidence in my work and the results I had been able to achieve.

Attending the presentations of other researchers shed light on what other areas of research were being pursued by my peers and the various techniques of assessment and analysis employed by them. I was particularly impressed by some of the questions posed by senior and active researchers in the audience. I drew inspiration from the depth of their understanding and inquiry and appreciated the level of detail with which they analyzed the work of others.

Some of the presentations were concise and clear, illustrating the key concepts and findings in a flow that made it easy to understand. On the other hand, there were many speakers who were fluent in their language, but were not able to line up or highlight the key concepts for the audience to absorb easily.

During the last day of the conference, I attended the workshop on ITS in ill-defined domains. Attending this workshop was a great learning experience as I got the opportunity to discuss with my peers work related to my area of research. It was interesting to note the variety of domains in which work was being carried out.

Overall, I would say that after attending the conference, I take home a great deal of confidence in my work, fresh ideas of new avenues to explore, and inspiration of commitment and dedication from established researchers. Meeting my peer researchers in person was an added advantage. It was gratifying to learn that they took interest in my work the same way I followed theirs. I look forward to contributing to ITS conferences in the future too.