Over the years I have participated or spoke at local and international conferences as an assistant professor of Applied Linguistics. I have had the pleasure of presenting papers at several universities including Effat University, which has always proved its value by being well ahead of the game in teaching methods. The proof is the high rate of employed graduates.
This time around I spoke at a government university, which is one of the oldest and largest institution of higher education in the country. Saudi Arabia’s government universities don’t get a lot of credit for their ingenuity in teaching methods and they still have a long way to go. But much to my surprise and delight, King Abdulaziz University’s English Language Institute in Jeddah is demonstrating a giant leap into the 21st century. I hope that all government universities and colleges take a page from the King Abdulaziz playbook and follow its lead.
The Language Institute is headed by Vice-Dean Nouf Al-Khatabi and perhaps most impressive during their recent one-day seminar that I attended was the institute’s organization and positive spirit among the faculty, staff and students.
This is all well and good and demonstrates how highly engaged the student population is with its curriculum and instructors. But what is obvious to the visitors is the tendency among faculty and students to use technology as a means of teaching and as a facilitator for knowledge. Earth-shattering news? Well, hardly outside Saudi Arabia. But here it’s a sign that government institutions — at least one, anyway — understands that today’s learners, which are generally students born in the late 1990s, are tech natives and in many cases are much more technology-savvy than their teachers.
The presentations I saw during the seminar varied from technology that helps instructors teach students to concepts behind computer games in education. We have to remember that there is a child in all of us, so to use that aspect of technology to acquire more knowledge is something that I appreciate.
Another key to successful instruction by using technology is to introduce differentiated teaching methods in which teachers use different teaching styles that are compatible with students’ different needs and preference style of learning. The head of the Language Institute’s development unit, Dr. Miramar Damanhoury, told me that they were working on a project to use the entire teaching and learning process to reintroduce materials that fit every single learning style for students.
It’s the right step by demanding that instructors stop perceiving students as a whole sum or one identity and teach by reaching the individual and not as a group per se.
The world’s universities have moved ahead and are more flexible in approaches to teaching methods. Technology has become a big part of our children’s lives and now it’s up to us as instructors to adjust education to fit the way students use it or we will lose them.
This time around I spoke at a government university, which is one of the oldest and largest institution of higher education in the country. Saudi Arabia’s government universities don’t get a lot of credit for their ingenuity in teaching methods and they still have a long way to go. But much to my surprise and delight, King Abdulaziz University’s English Language Institute in Jeddah is demonstrating a giant leap into the 21st century. I hope that all government universities and colleges take a page from the King Abdulaziz playbook and follow its lead.
The Language Institute is headed by Vice-Dean Nouf Al-Khatabi and perhaps most impressive during their recent one-day seminar that I attended was the institute’s organization and positive spirit among the faculty, staff and students.
This is all well and good and demonstrates how highly engaged the student population is with its curriculum and instructors. But what is obvious to the visitors is the tendency among faculty and students to use technology as a means of teaching and as a facilitator for knowledge. Earth-shattering news? Well, hardly outside Saudi Arabia. But here it’s a sign that government institutions — at least one, anyway — understands that today’s learners, which are generally students born in the late 1990s, are tech natives and in many cases are much more technology-savvy than their teachers.
The presentations I saw during the seminar varied from technology that helps instructors teach students to concepts behind computer games in education. We have to remember that there is a child in all of us, so to use that aspect of technology to acquire more knowledge is something that I appreciate.
Another key to successful instruction by using technology is to introduce differentiated teaching methods in which teachers use different teaching styles that are compatible with students’ different needs and preference style of learning. The head of the Language Institute’s development unit, Dr. Miramar Damanhoury, told me that they were working on a project to use the entire teaching and learning process to reintroduce materials that fit every single learning style for students.
It’s the right step by demanding that instructors stop perceiving students as a whole sum or one identity and teach by reaching the individual and not as a group per se.
The world’s universities have moved ahead and are more flexible in approaches to teaching methods. Technology has become a big part of our children’s lives and now it’s up to us as instructors to adjust education to fit the way students use it or we will lose them.
