November 11, 2021

The journey of Umm Al-Qura University to Effective E-Learning

For the past 16 years, the Catalyst Awards program has honored innovation and excellence in the Blackboard global community. In this series, a group of 2021 winners from across the globe shares their success stories and best practices.

This post was guest authored by Umm Al-Qura University represented by the Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education.

Umm Al-Qura University is a 2021 “Training and Professional Development” Catalyst Award winner. 

Umm Al-Qura University (UQU) is one of the largest public universities in Saudi Arabia. Its main campus is located in Mecca City. It was established in 1369 A.H. as the College of Shariah, and it was the first higher education edifice, in the modern concept, in the Kingdom. Since then, many new colleges of different specialties have been established.  

The university has more than 90,000 students, 35 colleges, 119 departments, and 596 academic programs across the five campuses in the Makkah region. It offers different specializations and grants bachelor's degrees, higher diplomas, master's and doctorate degrees in Shariah, Arabic language, education, social and applied sciences, medicine, and engineering. These programs contribute to fulfilling the needs of society and the requirements of the development plans for qualified personnel in different fields. 

The global education system faced difficult challenges and changes during the year 2020 because of the health pandemic (COVID-19). The pandemic affected the teaching methods and relied heavily on e-learning and distance education. These difficult challenges inspired us to provide better service and to facilitate the e-learning process for students and faculty members. As a result, the Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education prepared an integrated set of training programs for the success of the e-learning stage. 

The Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education at UQU faced some difficulties and obstacles during the training and professional development stage, such as motivating students and faculty members to join the training programs. Therefore, we prepared training course announcements to clarify the topics and their outcomes, as well as how these courses could improve the productivity of students and faculty during the academic year.  

Another challenge was preparing the training team during the transformation from the previously used learning  management system (LMS) to Blackboard. The Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education at UQU, launched a qualitative training program series specializing in digital learning methodology, as well as e-courses content to develop communication mechanisms between faculty members and students in a professional manner.  The Deanship also provided a digital library to encourage continuous self-learning and created online courses from A to Z to support the transition to remote learning. This encouraged faculty members and students to achieve course outcomes through e-learning platform.  

The Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education also cooperated with Blackboard Academy to deliver the "Expert in Digital Teaching and Learning” series program for the professional training team at UQU. 

Through continuous analysis of the user feedback after each training, the UQU enhanced the programs, trainers, and support. For example, one-to-one training and on-call support are available through five channels, such as virtual calls, ticketing, and emails, to meet all student and faculty needs. 

In conclusion, the Deanship of E-Learning and Distance Education is becoming more aware of the difficulties that Blackboard users face. The technical support team and the training team are always ready to provide the best services in proportion to the needs of users. This has improved the experience of the Blackboard users and developed their skills to use e-learning systems and their support tools, as well as the quality of education for faculty members and added new teaching strategies. Employees have become more professional in using the Blackboard learning system. All these developments of students, faculty, and staff -contribute the progress of the university and its advancement in the field of e-learning. 

For more on our Catalyst Awards Program visit our Catalyst Awards Page.

The Anthology Team