Abdul Basit

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread, schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions around the globe are shifting to online learning in an effort to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Adapting and delivering distance learning to students at this scale has never been attempted before. Then again, extraordinary times call for exceptional measures.

US-based Blackboard, which has an established 20-year presence in the GCC and wider Gulf Region and working with higher education institutions in the region, working closely with its clients to ensure they could keep education going during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

“Across the GCC and wider Gulf region, we are working very closely with the ministries of higher education to provide the right platform and support to their universities,” Robert Speed, Vice President at Blackboard for the Middle East and Africa region told The UAE News during an exclusive interview.

Speed added, “We are helping them scale their virtual collaboration and learning environments and to support business continuity based on the GCC decision to go online due to the closures of all Universities and K-12 schools.”

Speed said, “Blackboard has teaching and learning at its core as our technologies are built for this very purpose, and we have quality solutions in place to accommodate the needs of each Ministry and institution to deliver their faculty experience to students online.”

On March 22, the UAE started programs through distance learning, and thousands of schoolchildren across the UAE are enjoying the first nationwide initiative to implement remote learning in the country. Learning from home can be a daunting experience for those who have only ever studied in a classroom environment.

In this time of uncertainty, institutions and even governments are faced with making decisions in hours whether to shut down and move online. “We are actively having these conversations with our clients in the Gulf region,” Speed said.

Education institutions in the GCC countries are thinking about three main things:

1) Quickly establishing virtual classrooms to provide continuity in teaching and learning.

2) Quickly training faculty and academic staff to effectively leverage technology in delivering teaching and learning.

3) Ensuring that the content they deliver online is engaging, accessible and inclusive for all students

As they look for solutions to help manage through this change, Blackboard had seen increased engagement with its existing platforms. They want to learn more about Blackboard’s learning platform, virtual collaboration solution and professional development series.
“One of our solutions institutions are relying on during the Covid-19 global epidemic is Blackboard Collaborate,” Speed said.

Blackboard Collaborate is specifically designed for educators and learners and can ease the transition to a fully digital education environment by offering both synchronous and asynchronous course capabilities. The virtual classroom solution connects students and instructors via both desktop and mobile devices.

Designed to simulate a physical classroom, the tool includes features that connect students and promote collaboration, engagement, and accessible learning through features such as hand raising, whiteboard, chat, breakout groups, and polls. The solution integrates seamlessly with all leading learning management systems (LMS).

“Since the closures, we have experienced an unprecedented increase in the user volume using Collaborate. In fact, we had to dramatically scale up our capacity to meet the growing demand for distance learning. In the last week, we have increased our capacity by 50x to meet this demand,” he informed.

A sizeable portion of the universities and institutions for higher education within the UAE, as well as other countries across the GCC, currently leverage Blackboard’s solutions to incorporate online learning into their infrastructures. Over the last few years, Blackboard has worked extensively with its clients in the region to understand and meet their specific needs, and now the company is in a position to support the region’s education sector in this time of flux and transition. – abdulbasit@theuaenews.com