Project Manager: Dr/ Yasser El Gabarty

ntroduction

Believing in the importance of e-learning as a solution for the problem that faces education nowadays, the Ministry of Higher Education aimed to establish Electronic Learning Centers in every university. Ain Shams University is considered one of the most ancient universities in Egypt as it's the third university founded in Egypt in 1950, since then ASU has been doing its duty in achieving the higher education facing the increasing number of youth in their demand for higher education. Since Ain Shams University Keeps pace with the international scientific development, the university was keen on the Electronic Learning field and gave it the needed attention due to its major importance in the coming years. The center is going to facilitate distance learning procedure & convert the courses into electronic courses that can be accessed anywhere. Hence, we could overcome the chains associated with linking education to location, time and cost.

Project's Goals

Making the electronic courses available to students to raise their scientific grade, allow interactivity between students & their professors without the chains of time or place which would lead to raising the educational level and achieving the required quality from students to compete locally & internationally to reach (a world without papers, a university without walls), and then to achieve the following sub goals:

- Supporting students’ capability of learning to the maximum using information technology.

- Increasing the satisfaction of the educational needs for the students, which traditional education can't provide.

- Developing student's learning ability to upgrade their personalities.

- Providing flexible educational environment with a strategy that uses modern teaching methods.

- Providing an electronic environment that helps in supporting the decision making process & achieving administrative transactions quickly.

- Managing, Saving &Handling all data and information electronically.

- The optimal use of the infrastructure (the network).

- Facilitating professors work in managing the educational process that reacts with the technological environment.

- Providing electronic society where all sides of educational process can be linked through forums and email without the chains of time or place.

- Available information for the students anywhere, any time.

- Several easy ways to evaluate the students.

- Rising the professors’ capability level to invest information technology in the educational process during theoretical or practical lectures or outside the class.

- Achieving self-learning, distance learning and the introduction of the concept of Continuing Education or Lifelong Learning.

- Preparing the students for the use of information technology in education and equiping them with different types of thinking skills, and developing their innovative and creative faculties.

- Preparing the graduates for the global competition.

Project's implementation phases:

- Establishing e-Learning Center at Ain Shams University.

- Starting the process of furnishing the center with the necessary equipment, furniture and infrastructure.

- Announcing the need to hire technical staff required for the center. 

- Hiring six technicians so far (content developers - designers). 

- Training the staff of the center on how to design and manage e-courses.

-Designing the electronic content through detailed procedures about the content design and activation methods through the process of developing  e-courses   that consists of several stages:

  - Analysis: means to analyze the needs of learners and to identify their interests.

  - Design: to determine the sequence of delivery of educational material.

  - Development: building educational material content.

  - Implementation: learning process and control.

  - Evaluation: evaluate the learning process.

- Designing a system to manage the educational process through the program "Moodle", which is a program to organize & give licenses to students to use the electronic services in addition to teachers and supervisors to be used in the educational process. Through "Moodle",  there is a chance to import and export e-learning content , as well as following up the performance of students, and to  propose subjects in discussion forum & live chat rooms etc.

- Designing electronic services such as admission & registration service, or access to digital libraries & e-books, or the results announcement etc. Working through Ain Shams University and the Supreme Council of Universities’ Portal on designing & creating single access point that contains the information needed for the university's e-courses to connect all Egyptian universities in order to benefit from the e-courses of Ain Shams University.

Top Achievements

1- Establishing a national center for e-learning in the Supreme Council of Universities (www.nelc.edu.eg).

2- Creating 22 centers to produce e-courses for Egyptian universities with production capacity up to 100 e-syllabi annually.

3- Establishing national standards for e-courses and applying them to courses that have been produced in universities.

4- Producing and publishing 300 electronic syllabi (www.nelc.edu.eg).

5- Training the university staff & students on the e-learning methods.

Project's outputs (until September 2007):

- Designing and developing a website for the e-learning center in Ain Shams University.

- Setting up a management software for e-courses data for all Egyptian universities

- Producing the center's first e-syllabus according to the project plan which is "Parasitology" Faculty of Medicine - Ain Shams University.

- Producing a guide to instruct students how to deal with e-courses and to spread the culture of e-learning at the university.

- Designing a number of presentations that help defining the e-courses in terms of global standards of quality.

- Providing publications with different monitors that include software of e-learning content management through the internet, such as Moodle.

- Approving the holding of the first conference "e-learning communities" in February 2008.

- Approving the establishment of many workshops to spread the culture of e-learning in the university.

Beneficiaries of the projec:

- Staff.

- Students.

- University Administration.

- Different departments in the faculties.

- Arab Universities.