Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
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A Suggested Perspective to Shift Blended Learning in The Higher Education Institutions Towards Sustainability
Shaher Rebhi Elayyan
ABSTRACT:
Universities are the basis of social progress and described as micro-societies to qualify individuals and improve the quality of life. In recent years, many universities are being threatened because of increase demand of education, inflation of students inside classes, lack of material resources and reduction of government subsidies. These reasons led universities’ officials to think how to preserve their achievements and how to shift towards sustainability to keep quality education, outstanding research, and distinguished service to the community. The universities start using technology to support their services and minimize these challenges without proper attention until the corona virus pandemic had spread to all corners of the globe at the beginning of 2020 and causes lockdown in all fields and sectors. At this moment, universities and all other institutes understood the importance of applying technology in teaching.
Universities starts using Learning Management Systems LMS, activating open access platforms and adopting Blended learning as the core of education. Sultanate of Oman was affected by the pandemic and to ensure health and safety of students and teaching staff, all academic institutions announced year 2020/2021 as a year of Blended Learning, an approach to education that combines traditional classroombased methods of teaching with online classes or distance learning through digital platforms or television channels.
The initial national priority in Oman Vision 2040 focuses on inclusive education, lifelong learning, and scientific research that lead to a knowledge-based society and competitive national talents. Therefore, the issue is how to motivate academic staff to develop their skills and attributes to provide blended learning that is sustainable, lifelong, interactive, and attractive to students. Many activities were held to discuss sustainable blended learning such as Omani forum for blended learning (2020) and many undocumented initiatives and public workshops that were organized by the ministry of education (Blended learning: A new approach to Oman’s education system, 2020; virtual educational forum, 2021), but within the limits of the author’s knowledge, there are no reviewed publications relevant to this issue that the current study tries to do. Specifically, the statement of the problem will be identified by the question: “what is the suggested Perspective to Shift the Blended Learning in the Universities Towards Sustainability According to the National Priorities of Oman Vision 2040”?
To construct the suggested perspective, the current study will apply mixed method: quantitative survey design that “involves data to test hypotheses or to answer questions about people’s opinions on some topic or issue” (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2013, 184) and qualitative design to collect data from senior managers in the universities by direct observation and depth interviews.
The population will consist of all stakeholders such as vice-chancellors, directors, deans, academic staff and students at 5 universities in Sultanate of Oman. The sample will include representative students and academic staff in these universities to gather their responses by questionnaires while observations and interviews will be implemented with all vice-chancellors, deans and directors. Before applying quantitative and qualitative tools, their psychometric characteristics (validity and reliability) will be checked.
Findings and conclusions of the current study are expected to improve instructional procedures based on blended learning, raise the academic staff motivation and attitudes toward it and direct the universities leaders strengthen the institutional infrastructure and human-physical learning environment. Also, the study recommendations will introduce operationally support to the national priorities of Oman Vision 2040 that emphasized in the first priority the importance of sustainability through increasing the quality of basic and higher education and developing scientific and educational curricula, so that graduates are acquainted with competitive qualifications and employability skills to enter the local and international labor market.
keywords: higher education, lifelong education, online learning, Continuous Education, E-learning