On March 26-27, 2018 partners of the JOVITAL project conducted a field visit to Jordan, hosted by PSUT in Amman.
The aim of the visit was to discuss issues related to (international) online / distance learning, academic capacity building, and elaborate on the Jordanian HEIs status-quo against international state of the art.
In addition to the project partners, the forum has been attended by Academic Deans, E-Learning Leads, and International Office Leads from different universities in Jordan. Participants have been welcomed by Prof. Arafat Awajan, Vice President at PSUT, and introduces to the EU funded project and their impact on Higher Education in Jordan by Prof. Ahmad Abu Al-Haija, Director of Erasmus+ office in Amman.
Dr. Adiy Tweissi, Director of eLearning Center at PSUT presented the status of e-Learning in Jordan, followed by a group discussion on the enablers and challenges for the further uptake of eLearning and Virtual Mobility in the country.
Along the visit, we also had the opportunity to learn more about Edraak, a massive open online course (MOOC) initiative, provided by the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF). It is built on the EdX open online learning platform. There are currently 31 courses on Edraak, which have been taken by more than 435,000 learners. 80% of the courses are developed by Edraak in Arabic, and 20% are EdX courses from international institutions such as Harvard and MIT, translated into Arabic by Edraak.
Dr. Katherine Wimpenny, Centre for Global Learning, Education and Attainment, Coventry University and Prof. Eric Schoop, Chair of Business Informatics, TUD, moderated the forum based on expert perspectives about education and policy for virtual innovative teaching and learning in Jordan.
As well as important time for discussing the more technical aspects of the project, we made time to network and socialise. Partners expressed how welcome they were made to feel, and how inspired they felt about being on campus at PSUT and discussing more about strategies to achieve a continuous improvement in teaching and learning practices in Jordan.
