Open AccessShifting focus to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Universities: Challenges and opportunities
Author(s) -
Nouf Aljohani
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
education for information
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.433
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1875-8649
pISSN - 0167-8329
DOI - 10.3233/efi-211533
Subject(s) - covid-19 , syllabus , pandemic , higher education , curriculum , online learning , process (computing) , electronic learning , political science , educational technology , public relations , pedagogy , sociology , computer science , medicine , multimedia , disease , pathology , virology , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , operating system
Since 2020, Saudi administrations have provisionally closed educational institutions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. At the time, employing technology was imperative to accelerate learning efforts and offer methods of enhancing interactions between learners and among learners and tutors. In this review, I first describe the e-learning systems that were used in higher education before the pandemic. Then, I investigate the impact of COVID-19 on Saudi higher education and how universities and public educational institutions responded to the pandemic. In the conclusion, I argue that policymakers, university sectors, and syllabi developers should unify national e-learning strategies, integrate technology in a systematic way, and design e-learning curricula to meet the needs of an ever-advancing world and revolutionise the learning process.