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>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
5.
CONCLUDING REMARKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The paper presents a successful integration of research, teaching
and community services through the use of web-based educational
courses and discussion forums. The results obtained from the project
are in accordance with the recent panel discussion presented by
Agogino et al [8] which showed clearly how boundaries of engineering
education practice can be stretched through the integration of
education, research and community services. Based on the present
work, the following conclusions can be drawn:
·
The research on e-Learning concepts and tools shows clearly that
building an educational web site is not a difficult task, rather
any one can build a site for his students. Basic
Microsoft applications available on standard personnel computers can
be effectivelly used to build a web site.
·
Web-based courses on Metrology and Quality Control in Arabic
language have been developed and hosted on the web for technical and
engineering students; They are freely accessed at the links (http://hctmetrology.tripod.com)
and (http://hctmetrology.tripod.com/quality/)
for any one looking for training on these engineering topics which
are of crucial importance in nowadays global economy.
·
The web-based learning approach is well accepted by our students; It
has been found to be very efficient in enhancing the quality of
learning and training at vocational training and engineering
education levels.
·
More success to the e-Learning package was added by linking the
web-based courses to Arabic discussion forums. This approach has
been found effective to create an
interactive environment to students, teachers and practitioner
engineers where knowledge can be constructed and experiences can be
shared and exchanged.
The
authors believe that it is very possible to integrate teaching,
research and community services through the use of Information and
Communication technologies especially the web-based learning
approach. It is our duty to make use of these technologies to
duplicate our traditional course material into digital form and
hence produce and disseminate it as an educational material through
the web. This will certainly change us from pure consumers of the
knowledge produced by our fellow educators at the west to producers
of knowledge to our Arab community and to the whole humanity.
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