Dubai, April 2006 - (by Umme Salma Mujtaba ) The King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) was officially established by Royal Decree in September 1963. With the new emerging information and instructional technologies and their influence on teaching and learning, the campus has sought to equip faculty members with the necessary skills to cope with these developments and utilize their benefits in teaching and learning.
The eLearning Center at KFUPM
The eLearning Center assists the University community in exploiting the potential of technology to enhance teaching and learning. One of its primary goals is to promote quality, self-paced learner-centered education through the development and delivery of quality web-based courses that can be delivered completely online.
Moreover, the eLearning Center provides assistance to KFUPM faculty to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness through the development of interactive web-based materials to supplement traditional courses as well as by organizing training workshops related to the development and delivery of online material.
The eLearning Center provides a number of services to the university community in order to achieve its objectives. Services and activities currently offered by the Center include:
Awareness Events
The Center regularly organizes public events on various issues related to eLearning, like benefits and limitations of eLearning, instructional design, online teaching, etc. Speakers of international repute in eLearning are invited to conduct these events.
Software and Resources
The eLearning Center provides all necessary software, like Course Management Systems (CMS), authoring tools, assessment tools, etc., to ensure successful delivery of eLearning activities. Course Management Systems (CMS) help faculty members to carry out course- related activities through the web. This includes course content delivery, communication and collaboration, and assessment. Currently the eLearning Center is providing WebCT for the KFUPM community.
Training Workshops
Hands-on training programs that cover a wide range of topics are frequently conducted for KFUPM faculty to enable them to develop effective web-based instruction. These range from instructional design of online courses, where participants are introduced to various concepts and tools that help in designing pedagogically sound online courses, to the development of web-based content using various web-based content-development tools, such as Macromedia's Flash and Authorware and Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator. In addition, the Center provides training in WebCT and its tools to enable faculty members to publish their courses online.
eLearning Quality Standards
To ensure quality in all eLearning activities at KFUPM, the Center has started the development of guidelines and quality standards for eLearning processes, like copyrights, content development, course delivery, assessment and evaluation, online teaching, infrastructure, etc.
