RIYADH, 8 June 2005 — King Saud University has set up a major videoconferencing facility as part of its distance-learning program that not only beams lectures into classrooms across six girls’ campuses in Riyadh but also to 20 different locations of KSU colleges in Riyadh, Qassim and Abha.
Ahmad Youssef of First Video Communication (FVC), a videoconferencing firm, said the demand for girls’ education and human resources development, together with security concerns, have led to a 40 percent annual growth rate for the Kingdom’s videoconferencing market as against the world average of 30 percent annually.
Youssef and FVC’s Regional Director K.S. Parag were speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of a seminar on videoconferencing attended by representatives of banking, training, education and health care sectors. It was organized by FVC and Baud Telecom Co. (BTC), which represents FVC and its US partner Polycom.
Referring to KSU’s distance-learning program for girls, Youssef said it has proved to be a valuable tool that makes it possible for classrooms in far-flung areas to be interconnected to a nodal point on the main campus from where experienced teachers deliver lectures for the benefit of girls.
“A salient feature of the system, especially for girls’ education, is the one-way video and two-way audio facility that enables female students to watch the teacher on the screen while he can only hear their voice during the interactive discussion,” Youssef said.
He observed that six other girls colleges had contacted them for setting up similar facilities on their respective campuses, while the Ministry of Education and several hospitals, banks and training centers were going ahead with plans for introducing teleconference into their facilities.
Parag and Hany Ezzat Al-Sabrout, another BTC executive, said the Ministry of Education was seriously considering deployment of the teleconferencing system as a means of overcoming the acute shortage of qualified Saudi English teachers. This was a major factor in putting on the government’s plan to introduce English teaching from the 5th Grade instead of the 7th Grade as at present.
