When Ahlam Al-Watban teaches botany as an assistant professor at King Saud University, she seeks to connect with her students by sharing her experiences and telling her personal story.
“What I try to do with my students is to inspire them, connect with them and serve as a role model for success,” Al-Watban said. “I share with them my experiences and my story to get them excited about what they’re studying and how they will apply this.”
But as technology continues to reshape the higher education landscape, Al-Watban says there is an ongoing need for faculty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to learn more about how to engage their students online.
“Students don’t want to sit there and listen to a lecture. They’re bored,” Al-Watban said. “As faculty, we have all the IT support and tools, but we don’t know how to use them.
“We’re trying to make our students as highly educated as possible and we have the chance to raise the standards of our education so we can meet this goal,” she said. “But we need to motivate other faculty to embrace new technologies that will make learning more active.
“This is what we’re here to do.”
By “here,” Al-Watban is referring to the United States. She is one of several women faculty members from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who plan to spend the next year here participating in a year-long eLearning Pioneers Program. The program — being sponsored by the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia — comes by way of a partnership between The Open Education Consortium and the National Center for E-Learning and Distance Learning in Saudi Arabia.
