E-learning object repository system for sharing learning objects among Saudi universities

Abstract

This research discusses the status and diversity of needs for building a centralized E-learning repository system for Saudi Universities. The Saudi government has called for a national plan to adopt information technology. The plan recommends implementation of E-learning and distance learning, and their prospective applications in higher education. Many universities have started and initiated a form of E-learning services. This kind of the learning needs repository system for sharing learning objects among universities is considered a necessity to empower the educational system and raise the standard of higher education through all universities. Most of the repositories in Saudi Arabia are just another form of E-library or general use repositories as they are not structured to classify and categorize learning objects based on their granularity, also they are not capable to deal with metadata associated with each learning object. The study is based on surveys that were distributed to faculty members in various Saudi Universities. The purpose is to provide an analytical overview of the current needs for Elearning object repository system among Saudi Universities for sharing learning objects and materials. Moreover, the primary aim of the study is to give an evaluation of the needs of faculty members by gathering facts about the current demands and future adoption among Saudi Universities. To achieve this, the services needed by each part in the universities were analysed. The lecturers in Saudi universities have urgent needs for E-learning materials on repository. The study concludes that teaching at a university level requires several materials in order to enrich the teaching process and provide multi-learning sources for learners such as: open source materials, flash files, video etc. However, some materials have moderate importance for teaching, like templates, and dynamic maps because their less frequent use in teaching. Moreover, the lecturers in Saudi universities express strong needs for several types of services and functionality which the repository should provide. These include connecting similar subject materials to benefit the teaching staff, tagging the materials so they can be recalled easily and linking to existing external teaching materials. In this regard, the function teaching staff can evaluate others teaching materials were not important enough perhaps because evaluating the teaching materials is not an essential part of the teaching process. According to the survey results, a repository system is designed and built in response to the lectures’ needs in Saudi Universities who participated in the conducted survey; and also it is designed to be shared among several universities. The repository search engine is developed to operate according to three categories: general topic search, frequent words and the related words. The model; which was established and evaluated; can be very beneficial for promoting E-learning in Saudi Arabia particularly and in other countries with similar backgrounds and culture. The study concludes that E-learning repositories has the potential to offer a successful learning experience in Saudi Arabia, this research provides insight into how needs of implementing E-learning objects repository sharing objects among Saudi universities.