Online Education in Saudi Arabia
Online learning, including distance education by online means, has received increasing attention among Saudi educators as a way of increasing the accessibility of higher education. This type of instruction offers access to many students who aspire to study at the university level but live in remote areas or are working to earn income and therefore are unable to physically attend school. Distance education is an aspect of online education that continues to offer great untapped potential. As Al-Khalifa (2009) remarked, Saudi Arabia “has been slower than many nations to move into distance education and that it has a very short history of using printed, electronic, or broadcast means for students who are not physically on site” (para. 1).
The need to expand access to higher education is one of the main factors driving the ongoing growth of online learning in the Kingdom. In addition to the desire to make university education available to students who are located in rural areas or who are currently employed, there are powerful demographic forces at work. According to the latest national statistics, by 2009 Saudi Arabia’s youth population had reached 65% of the entire population. Many high-school graduates were unable to find places at the national universities and approximately 100,000 are currently studying abroad on scholarships at higher education institutions in such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Online learning offers the prospect of expanding the total number of students who can be enrolled in Saudi universities without actually requiring increases in the physical capacity of the universities and associated facilities. Public and private higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia cannot accommodate the increasing number of high-school graduates who wish to obtain a university degree and thus it is paramount that online learning and certification become part of the structure of higher education. Another factor encouraging the implementation of online learning is the visual learning style of many Saudi students. Online approaches, which of courseincorporate visual learning, can therefore enhance the traditional and relatively passive approaches to education. This new mode of teaching offers great potential to make students more self-directed and engaged.
The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has begun to acknowledge the need to adopt online technologies in order to offer opportunities to the increasing numbers of students graduating from high school. According to Tony Bates (2009), a consultant who runs many e-learning workshops and provides e-learning training across the region, some of the more forward-thinking leaders of Saudi education have been exploring online education over the course of the last decade:
King Fahd University in Dhahran has been working closely with UBC in Canada since 2003, with staff from King Fahd University visiting UBC for workshops a few times over this period. The use of e-learning at King Fahd University for Oil and Petroleum, for instance, had become widespread, both to support classroom teaching and in a hybrid mode, with a mix of reduced classroom time and online learning. (para. 3)
These workshops have been part of the plan of the Ministry of Higher Education to study the feasibility of offering online education blended and integrated with traditional methods of course delivery.
As of 2013, many Saudi universities were well advanced in integrating online learning into almost every undergraduate program. Major universities are currently implementing or have already fully implemented web-based instruction through Web CT or Blackboard as a companion to all their classroom study programs. According to Mirza (n.d.),
MoHE has just recently established a national centre for e-learning and distance learning which aims to support in the creation of electronic educational material, and provide an electronic venue for faculty members of any local university to utilize in creating e-courses through its own Learning Management System. (p. 4)
There are currently large numbers of undergraduate students enrolled in online degrees in all major Saudi universities. Some students are earning bachelor’s degrees in business administration, Arabic language, Islamic studies, sociology, and history that are exclusively online. In 2011 a new electronic university was established with three colleges and an enrolment of more than 20,000 students across the Kingdom (ses.edu.sa). Nevertheless, there remains considerable reluctance among some stakeholders to introduce entirely online degree programs, including among leaders within the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education. In addition, the MoHE remainsunprepared to accept or qualify anyone with an online qualification from any foreign institution, even from such renowned universities as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford which offer some online programs. These concerns stem from the fact that the very nature of online program delivery can raise doubts about whether students are in fact submitting their own work and, by implication, about the fairness of the evaluation of students’ performance.
Online Education in Saudi Arabia
Online learning, including distance education by online means, has received increasing attention among Saudi educators as a way of increasing the accessibility of higher education. This type of instruction offers access to many students who aspire to study at the university level but live in remote areas or are working to earn income and therefore are unable to physically attend school. Distance education is an aspect of online education that continues to offer great untapped potential. As Al-Khalifa (2009) remarked, Saudi Arabia “has been slower than many nations to move into distance education and that it has a very short history of using printed, electronic, or broadcast means for students who are not physically on site” (para. 1).
The need to expand access to higher education is one of the main factors driving the ongoing growth of online learning in the Kingdom. In addition to the desire to make university education available to students who are located in rural areas or who are currently employed, there are powerful demographic forces at work. According to the latest national statistics, by 2009 Saudi Arabia’s youth population had reached 65% of the entire population. Many high-school graduates were unable to find places at the national universities and approximately 100,000 are currently studying abroad on scholarships at higher education institutions in such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Online learning offers the prospect of expanding the total number of students who can be enrolled in Saudi universities without actually requiring increases in the physical capacity of the universities and associated facilities. Public and private higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia cannot accommodate the increasing number of high-school graduates who wish to obtain a university degree and thus it is paramount that online learning and certification become part of the structure of higher education. Another factor encouraging the implementation of online learning is the visual learning style of many Saudi students. Online approaches, which of courseincorporate visual learning, can therefore enhance the traditional and relatively passive approaches to education. This new mode of teaching offers great potential to make students more self-directed and engaged.
The Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has begun to acknowledge the need to adopt online technologies in order to offer opportunities to the increasing numbers of students graduating from high school. According to Tony Bates (2009), a consultant who runs many e-learning workshops and provides e-learning training across the region, some of the more forward-thinking leaders of Saudi education have been exploring online education over the course of the last decade:
King Fahd University in Dhahran has been working closely with UBC in Canada since 2003, with staff from King Fahd University visiting UBC for workshops a few times over this period. The use of e-learning at King Fahd University for Oil and Petroleum, for instance, had become widespread, both to support classroom teaching and in a hybrid mode, with a mix of reduced classroom time and online learning. (para. 3)
These workshops have been part of the plan of the Ministry of Higher Education to study the feasibility of offering online education blended and integrated with traditional methods of course delivery.
As of 2013, many Saudi universities were well advanced in integrating online learning into almost every undergraduate program. Major universities are currently implementing or have already fully implemented web-based instruction through Web CT or Blackboard as a companion to all their classroom study programs. According to Mirza (n.d.),
MoHE has just recently established a national centre for e-learning and distance learning which aims to support in the creation of electronic educational material, and provide an electronic venue for faculty members of any local university to utilize in creating e-courses through its own Learning Management System. (p. 4)
There are currently large numbers of undergraduate students enrolled in online degrees in all major Saudi universities. Some students are earning bachelor’s degrees in business administration, Arabic language, Islamic studies, sociology, and history that are exclusively online. In 2011 a new electronic university was established with three colleges and an enrolment of more than 20,000 students across the Kingdom (ses.edu.sa). Nevertheless, there remains considerable reluctance among some stakeholders to introduce entirely online degree programs, including among leaders within the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education. In addition, the MoHE remainsunprepared to accept or qualify anyone with an online qualification from any foreign institution, even from such renowned universities as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford which offer some online programs. These concerns stem from the fact that the very nature of online program delivery can raise doubts about whether students are in fact submitting their own work and, by implication, about the fairness of the evaluation of students’ performance.
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