Projet
Mech-eLearn
>Papers>Sharjah_paper2006
HOW TECHNICAL
COLLEGE COURSES BECOME SUCCESSFULL WEB-BASED E-LEARNING MODELS
THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF RESEARCH, TEACHING AND COMMUNITY SERVICE
ACTIVITIES
Mohamed Aichouni 1 and
Soraya Benchicou 2
1
PhD,
Assistant Professor
2
MSc
in Mechanical Engineering and PhD Candidate
Paper Presented
at 4th International Forum on Engineering Education,
Integrating
Teaching & Research with Community Service -
IFEE2006,
25-27 April 2006, University of Sharjah, Sharjah , United Arab
Emirates
4. COMMUNITY
SERVICES THROUGH WEB-BASED COURSES AND DISCUSSION FORUMS
Among the
objectives the research group focused on, were: a) to improve the
quality of the vocational training at technical college and higher
education levels, b) to facilitate the access to educational
material and c) to create a network of specialists with virtual
interests around a main technical subjects. By posting these courses
on the internet and leaving them freely accessed, our aim was to
share this information with other academic teachers and students and
with practitioner engineers and technicians from industry throughout
the Arab countries and hopefully to contribute in the building up of
knowledge society in the Arab world. In a recent study, Korich and
Hunt [7] showed the importance of other ICT tools such as discussion
forums, emails and virtual chats in the learning process and their
efficiency in contributing to better serve engineering and technical
communities and to disseminate knowledge within the community.
Online discussion forums are now regularly used as a component of
distance education courses in engineering education as a means of
promoting interaction between course participants. They create an
environment similar to the face-to-face classroom environment where
knowledge can be critically constructed, validated and shared. As
the use of discussion forums has grown and its efficiency in
e-Learning has been proved, it was decided to integrate this
approach in our web courses. After a careful analysis of the
existing discussion forums on the net in Arabic language it was
decided to link the courses with the “Tikania” forum (http://www.tkne.net/vb)
(Figure 6) and
the Arabic statisticians (http://www.arabicstat.com/board)
(Figure 7)
where sections of industrial metrology and quality control were
created respectively. The integration of these two discussion forums
with our web-based courses creates an interactive environment to
both students and practitioner engineers and led to a substantiall
increased interest of both categories on the topics. The quality of
the postings from the participants coming from different horizons
contributes in the construction of knowledge around the main
subjects and in building a collaborative learning environment where
novice student benefits from the experienced industrial engineer and
business manager.
During a one
year period, in the quality control discussion forum 25 subjects
were discussed and 145 postings have been done with total readings
of 14.450. The most popular subjects were the `Quality Control
Charts subject` with 34 postings and 3.545 readings and the subject
discussing `Quality in Education` with 12 postings and 1.581
readings. The industrial metrology discussion forum has been
operated for 4 months. The number of subjects discussed was 23 with
86 postings and 5.937 total readings by all participants.
Participants to these discussion forums have been from academia,
industry, government agencies, and business in different Arab
countries. They have shown their clear interest on this approach to
disseminate and share knowledge among the academic, industrial and
business communities. Table 2 summarizes the categories of the
participants in the discussion forums and those who contacted us
through the email provided on the web-based courses.
Table 2.
Categories of people who benefit from the sites
|
Category |
Nature of their organization |
Country |
Nature of use of sites |
|
Engineering Students |
Higher
Education Universities and Technical Colleges |
Saudi
Arabia, Palestine, Syria |
Course
supplement |
|
Post-Graduate
students |
Higher
Education Universities |
Algeria,
Syria, Saudi Arabia and France |
Research work (the sites helps in the translation between
arabic and english) |
|
Academic Teachers |
Higher
Education Universities and Technical Colleges |
Egypt,
Iraq |
Using
the sites to teach students at university / college. |
|
Industrial Engineers |
Petroleum, Cement, Food Industries |
Egypt,
Oman |
Practical questions. Using the sites as an industrial
training program at company. |
|
Employees in Governmental Organizations |
Government Organizations (Standards, Police) |
UAE,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia |
Practical questions. Relevant material on the sites. |
|
Employees in Service agencies |
Service
agencies (Health, Banking) |
KSA,
Koweit |
Practical questions |
|
Business managers |
Small
business managers |
Saudi
Arabia |
Practical questions |
Back to home / Retour a l`index
