With the economic imperatives skyrocketing and the rise in demand for a more skilled workforce, now is the time for expansion of online education in the region of Middle East. However, the need of the hour doesn’t justify the availability of the education requisites in the fullest. There are still certain challenges and perceptions left to overcome.
What are the aspects about the present and future of the Middle East that creates the earnest need for online education? The necessities and requirements are indeed varied. Firstly, there are economic factors promulgating the need for Online Education in the Middle East. Dubai for instance, has recently attracted 342 projects worth US$21 billion capital investment. These new projects will create job opportunities for 58,000 aspirants. Hence, the situation is ideal for investment in education that is exclusively knitted for professional careers.
The question is that can these existing brick and mortar universities acknowledge and fulfill the need of the hour and reach the kind of students who needs to be reached? This also includes the expatriate talents that are imported. It is a common trend among the expats to be reintegrated into the employment market they came from in future and most of them are unwilling stagnant their skills.
Online Education might not fulfill the needs of each student and every subject, but are traditional universities sufficient enough to cope with the increasing enrollment levels and the need of continuing professional development?
Countries located in the Middle East are starting to recognize the benefits of online learning and how it facilitates the needs of education empowerment even if many might not be too comfortable with it. The largest university, the United Arab Emirates University, for instance, have contributed sufficiently to the promotion of online learning. More than 300 decision-makers and leaders from the Middle East attended the Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-university annual congress exhibition in January on excellence in e-learning.
Online higher education has more expansive parlance than the traditional formats of imparting education. They have the ability and technology to reach a varied and complex community of learners. The fortify learners with self-reflection and more conducive methods that promote deep learning and face to face education. Moreover chief of academic officers believe that the quality of education offered by the online courses are at par to the ones available within the brick and mortar universities. The facts therefore, are in sharp contrast to the popular public perceptions of online education as being a poorer quality alternative to traditional learning.
