Professional Development Quality Assurance

Introduction
Everyone wants to be academically accepted wherever he/she goes. Academic acceptance is like a passport that allows you to cross the boards. On the market, each manufacturer seeks and works hardly to be at the top. Manufacturers market their products in many brilliant ways and before marketing their products, they seek first to ensure their products high quality because most people won’t spend their money in something not valuable, not cost effective. I think it is the same case with higher education institutions. Students are looking for accredited certificate that allows them to cross the boards. They want to get a job wherever without any arguments.
Moreover, many of them are ambitious and want to continue their higher education to get MA and PHD degree and in this case they need to ensure their Bachelor certificate authorization. This article reviews the institutional quality assurance at The American University in Cairo (AUC). The article will focus on the staff development quality assurance. I think staff development is vital for the success of any institution. That is because any institution depends upon its staff and the institution's staff represents the institution wherever they go; conferences, meetings …etc. Moreover, the rate of development process in many fields is faster than before. So, ones should keep up with these developments and changes and update him/her self regularly. To do so, staff should obtain many skills like time management to be a long life learner and to learn how to learn. I think learning how to learn is like learning how to swim. That is because swimming requires knowing how to deal with challenges and if you do not know how to swim you will not survive and if you do not know how to learn you cannot survive in the 21st century.
Many challenges will face anybody when it is the time to learn something new and we should face these challenges strongly to approve ourselves in the market, in universities and everywhere we go.

Quality assurance at AUC

The AUC holds institutional accreditation from the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools in the United States. The accreditation process is conducted each ten years with review in the mid of these ten years.
The academic reputation of any institution is major to its quality. And to have a good reputation, the institution's programs should be tested, assessed and evaluated continuously. One of the school of Continuing Education internal operations is to test and evaluate training and educational programs for quality assurance purposes. Moreover, this school offers this service to external customers like other universities, institutions, companies and governmental and non-governmental organizations. The school conducts these evaluation and testing services to determine the university programs effectiveness, training effectiveness and the quality of professional performance. Such continuous evaluation is critical to any institution to survive and sustain in this era where the higher education enter the market especially distance education. In addition, I think any institution is in need for self reflection to discover its own strengths and weaknesses in order to put strategic plan on how to strengthen more strengths points and overcome its weaknesses.
As cooperation should take place between academics and administrators in terms of ensuring the internal quality, the office of internal audit at AUC leads the university careers on how to use audit methodologies and it is in its try to continuously update its audit approaches. Again, self reflection can help careers to improve themselves and to improve the whole university system and internal operations according to their culture and local context.
Moreover, the internal audit office is responsible of assisting all members of the AUC community to act in accordance with policies and procedures and uphold the highest standards. Some services that the office is responsible to offer are:
· Operational Audits: Examine and evaluate the efficient and effective ways of using function resources.
· Compliance Audits: Determine the degree of a function's adherence to laws, regulations, policies, and procedures.
· Financial Audits: Addresses questions of accounting and reporting of financial transactions, including commitments, authorizations, and receipt and payment of funds.
· Information Systems (IS) Audits: Address the internal control environment of automated information processing systems and how people use those systems.
· Investigative Audits: Focus on civil or criminal abuse of laws or abuse of university’s policies and procedures।

Professional Development

When establishing any center, its vision, mission, goals and objectives should be stated clearly. The AUC established a center for learning and teaching. This center mission encourages excellence in teaching and facilitates the effective use of technology in teaching and learning process in order to stimulate learning. This mission supports the idea of professional development in that it emphasis on the high quality of teaching that for sure will stimulate and motivate students learning. Moreover, this mission cares about enhancing the excellence in teaching throughout the professional and effective use of recent technology. That means the center does not adopt any new technology without conducting needs analysis and writing down the plan of new technology implementation. I think the introduction of new technology in the institution require the center to train its faculty on how to use this technology. All these require deep analysis of such technology coast effectiveness.
To achieve this mission the center wrote down some goals and objectives. First, to ensure the continuous professional development of faculty as educators the center assists them through its services. For example, the center provides them with some training and conducts workshops on new innovative teaching approaches to develop their pedagogical skills of teaching. Workshops materials are uploaded in different formats on the university server, so those who could not attend the workshop can download workshop materials and read them to get an idea about what they have missed. From my point of view, this makes the teaching process more enjoyable and may influence students' attitudes towards learning. Some instructors are fixed with one teaching strategy and from my experience at Sultan Qaboos University; students avoid to take courses with such instructors. I think those instructors did not develop the skill of obtaining new skills and it is very difficult to negotiate with them about recent developments.
As researchers in the education field emphasis these days on the integration between technology and other subject areas in classrooms, the center provide faculty with some programs about exploring the new learning technology to enable them to integrate such technology in the classroom. I believe on this quite "one hand does not clap". Collaboration between people leads to the high proficiency and work quality. As the center believe on that, it collaborates with other libraries and learning technologies units in the application and use of innovative learning technology to enhance teaching and learning process.
The center provides faculty with a number of useful links about teaching strategies to aid them updating their knowledge. It really a great step to gather links about specific topic like teaching strategies on one page to easiness searching process specially for novices. I guess that this step is vital for ensuring the good quality of teaching strategies that academics should follow at AUC. Moreover, this may influence the reputation of AUC and its academic staff.

References:
1. American University at Cairo. (n.d). "Accreditation". Retrieved 28 April 2009. Available at: http://www.aucegypt.edu/aboutauc/Accreditation/Pages/default.aspx
2. American University at Cairo. (n.d). "Continuing Education Admission". Retrieved 28 April 2009. Available at:
http://www.aucegypt.edu/admissions/conted/Pages/default.aspx

3. American University at Cairo. (n.d). " About the Internal Audit Office". Retrieved 28 April 2009. Available at:
http://www.aucegypt.edu/offices/audit/Pages/About.aspx

Technology Selection Model for Web 2.0

Technology Selection Model for Web 2.0

(Note: double click on the image for clearer view )

Returning back to Dr।Kyle Peck’s lecture about Designing Learning Experiences in an Age of Options in ICOET2008, I want to reflect on the Technology Selection Model for Web 2।0 that he mentioned।

The model shows the steps that we should follow when selecting technology to enhance learning communities.

I think before we start designing any learning community we have to analyze first the learners not just to understand their preferences; as mentioned on the model; but to know if there is a need for an OLC or not.

I agree with Dr.Kyle Peck in his model in the order he made of selecting the appropriate technology for the task; we have to define first the learning task and then to make a list of the most appropriate technology to accomplish the learning task and then to choose the most appropriate one.

May Allah give you more knowledge

Tamadher AL-Za’abi

Learning communities for children

I attended last month the International Conference of Educational Technology 2008 (ICOET2008) and I was very interested in a lecture titled Designing Learning Experiences in an Age of Options delivered by Dr. Kyle Peck. He talked about creating online learning communities (OLC) which means interactions among people in an online environment and learn through group activity to define problems affecting them, to decide upon a solution, and to act to achieve the solution.

I think it is easier for educators to design learning communities for teenagers and matured students; but what about designing such communities for children?

I asked Dr. Kyle Peck this question and he said that it is a good idea to build OLC for children and in US children in each class have their own learning community but in a local network.

From my point of view, I think it is difficult to build OLC for children between (6-10 years) because they are not mature enough do not have the skills and the responsibility that help them to participate actively in such communities. But, we can train children above 10 years on how to interact in these communities and how to improve their skills to sustain in an OLC.

Waiting for my classmates’ comments.

May Allah give you more knowledge.

Tamadher AL-Za’abi

Reflection on Web 1.0 & Web 2.0

Tell me, I will forget.
Show me, I will remember.
Involve me, I will understand.

Through the 1990s and early 2000s[1], people used web as a store for content to be accessed. The content was developed by some professors and some people called the web at that time “brochure web”; it is known now as web 1.0. At that time users were passive receivers of information that might be forgotten after a period of time.

However, web 2.0 makes a shift in the use of the web. In web 2.0, users can create, organize, share, remix, critique, update,…etc information. The user is the most important aspect of Web 2.0 where he/she can interacts with others and creates communities where he/she can experience many things that he/she will never forget it.

We can look at Web 1.0 as a lecture, where a lecturer informs a large number of audiences about certain topic. On the other hand, Web 2.0 is like a conversation where each one can participate and share information and views and more cooperation will take place among users.

Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 provides the user many tools that enable him/her to interact positively with the web.
Here are some sites that provide you a list web 2.0 tools:

Deitel Resource Center
Go2Web2.0- a complete Web 2.0 directory

According to me, I am experiencing blogs; one of Web 2.0 tools; that enables me to post some ideas, reflections and views chronologically. I liked this experience; it gives me an opportunity to make my views globally accessible.



Useful links:

GigaOM

TechCrunch

May ِAllah give you more knowledge


[1] Deitle. P.J. Internet and Wide World Web How to Program. 2008. 4th edition. Chapter 3. Upper Saddle River, New Jersy, USA.

GenYES and Learner-centered

GenYes program started in 1996 in the Olympia school district in Washington State।
The main aim was to make students participate in the process of integrating technology into curriculum of each K-12 grade.
It is a project-based learning experience that provides teenagers great opportunities to improve their skills in learning technology, collaboration, communication and project management. It brings the learner into the center of learning process where some factors that affect learner-centered approach appear.
Although students learn new technology, they use it as assistive technology whenever and wherever they need it in their classroom.

For more information visit GenYes

E-learning Gate

When I entered the school, there was a green board. Then we shift to a whiteboard. Now, there are computers and there is an internet. I do not know what will happen after 10 years.
The E-learning Gate is a new project that the Ministry of Education established. The Ministry starts to change its vision towards e-learning according to the international educational change in the role of both teacher and learner. The learning process has been shifted to be more learner-centered. This site helps students to learn more about computer software and to have more elaboration and tutorials in other subjects. Students can participate in different forums (forums for all subjects that they are studying at schools).
There are some educational issues discussed among educators(e.g. learning objects)
The site provides visitors a user guide to make it easy for novices to navigate the site.

This is the URL of the website:
http://www.abegs.org/Sportal/Default.aspx

Can I be a pure E-Learner?

In this era and with the information expansion we have to educate ourselves in different life aspects to accommodate with these changes; especially technological changes as it runs as fast as we can imagine। People can learn a lot of things through the Internet। Nowadays, different academic institutions deliver different online courses where we can choose any course that fit with our needs. Being e-learners is a big issue that has been discussed among e-learning specialists.

But, who are those people who can learn individually online? What are their characteristics? And what should they do to be pure e-learners?
This link enables you to read about e-learner competences.
http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/jul2002/birch.html

According to me, I can identify the skill gap that I have to overcome in order to improve my skills or knowledge। Unfortunately, sometimes I feel that I do not want to open my computer to do my work and I am with out motivation until something happen to me and raise my intrinsic motivation। On the other hand, sometimes I feel that I have a power and my intrinsic motivation at the top and I want to do any thing to achieve my goals। I am responsible for my learning। Always I set my learning goals and I plan and organize my learning tasks। Unfortunately, I fail on following my plan because I have a problem with managing my time especially if some emergent circumstances face me. I believe that I can learn on my own depending on the topic but in an organized manner.

I am an audiovisual learner। I like to my voice while reading and reread again for more comprehension. I like to draw concept maps to understand the relationships between different concepts. I realize the usefulness of what I am studying if I be able to apply it and try it on my life or at least observe an application around me. When I test my self; either by answering questions or recalling what I have studied after a period of time, I be more satisfied that I learned something new. So, if I am going to take an online course I will tell my online moderator about my learning style so he/she consider me when deliver the course.

When it comes to virtual communication I believe on myself that I can communicate with my peers effectively through speaking and listening specially when discussing issues from different perspectives for a long time। I do not like to read or write too much long topics.

When I was at school, I disliked working in groups because I learn nothing from my classmates। However, when I joined the university I have changed my attitude and I prefer now to work within groups because I can share knowledge, perspectives and skills with my peers. It is the same with me when it comes to e-learning.

When I do any thing, I like to listen to others’ comments on my work because I believe that any one can not improve his/her skills without others’ feedback (others are our mirror).

I think I have the ability to be a pure e-learner if I improve my time management skill and search for different ways that can help me to keep my intrinsic motivation high.

Quote to motivate myself:

Do not wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.