Fierce Education is recognizing those administrators, faculty, instructors, professors, and other higher education influencers who are boldly embracing innovative ways of teaching, technologies and methods to engage and reach students during these challenging times. They are the “Fierce Educators” who are rethinking higher education in this new blended learning world and we will be highlighting their successes and accomplishments.
Fierce Educator:
Dr. Abdullatif Al Shamsi
Affiliation:
President & CEO, Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), United Arab Emirates
Being Fierce:
Dr. Abdullatif Al Shamsi is one of a small group of trailblazing academic leaders in the Middle East. He presently is President & CEO of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), a 16-campus Community University in the United Arab Emirates, serving a student body of around 25,000 .
The COVID-19 pandemic required a lightening response to serving a geographically diverse student base. Within a two-week window in Spring 2020, Dr. Al Shamsi helped the HCT go virtual with great success. Dr Al Shamsi led the HCT in seamlessly transforming its education delivery from pre-dominantly on-campus learning to 100 percent online or remote learning. This enabled a continuity of business for the 16 HCT campuses and facilitated the on-time graduation of the 2019-2020 student body.
To ensure that its remote learning model met global standards, HCT collaborated closely with its longtime partner, Blackboard, and other technology leaders, such as Zoom. The partnerships ensured the availability of the virtual world’s best possible teaching, learning, and assessment tools. This helped deliver personalized educational experiences for both academics and students. HCT also had a significant advantage in preparedness with its faculty having received extensive professional development using Blackboard Learn, and its integrated technologies, over the past few years. In addition, faculty members were able to adapt quickly to the use of the new online interactive tools through professional training workshops. Faculty were also able to earn prestigious e-Teacher certificates from Blackboard International.
As the world progressed towards a more manageable pandemic, the HCT’s Hybrid Education Model (HEM) proved to be an ideal “fit -for -purpose” model for the COVID-dictated learning environment. It combines on-campus learning with distance learning, via a mix of courses being delivered online, and on-campus, which provides students with the optimal educational service, covering theoretical and applied studies, best suited for their academic requirements.
Courses that require hands-on learning can be held on campus, while courses focused on theory learning are online. This combination gives students the best of theory and applied studies in their courses and makes classes more flexible. While some extra-curricular students’ activities can be conducted on campus, the majority are delivered via HCT’s Digi-Campus platforms. The on-campus work by students covered laboratory work, workshops, seminars and presentations; assessments/exams, applied research activities and entrepreneurship activities at HCT’s InnCuVation Spaces. At the beginning of the semester, students were allowed to have a one face-to-face meeting with their teachers and academic advisors, in order to familiarize themselves with the syllabus and course requirements.
The HEM inspired faculty members to leverage technology and embed intelligent and innovative teaching and learning methods. HCT courses could be delivered through blended learning, using the online course-management system. As a result, they found that a combination of remote work and on-campus work helped boost productivity and efficiency of performance for faculty, while engaging students in a digital world, tailored for their personal learning styles.
To gauge whether the HEM would be accepted as the “new normal” for HCT students, Dr. Al Shamsi commissioned a distance learning in higher education e-questionnaire of HCT community members, which was posted on HCT’s social media accounts and website. The survey sought feedback on responders’ satisfaction rates, HCT’s readiness, as well as measuring distance learning’s advantages and future challenges. Approximately 46,000 individuals, from a broad cross-section of society, participated in this e-questionnaire, expressing their strong agreement with the continuity of distance learning incorporating lectures, assessments and activities. The level of students’ engagement in the online delivery model was reflected in one survey question, which asked about what student success in distance learning in higher education reflects. The majority of responders replied that it was a mix of their self-learning abilities, technological abilities and a fun alternative to classroom learning. The majority of participants saw the new model as a “a new shift in education”.
In addition, recognizing the need to ensure employment for HCT grads, Dr. Al Shamsi spearheaded the development of hybrid-education where all students graduated with both an academic and professional qualification that was recognized and valued by employers. Further he outlined a unique 5-year guarantee to recruiting employers to allow a free continuation of professional development for HCT’s graduates, therefore cementing a powerful win-win partnership with industry at a time when training budgets were being curtailed.
Dr. Al Shamsi’s drive to build a culture of collective innovation in HCT and drawing from the learnings from the pandemic, has led the team in developing a new educational model for graduates and educators, defined simply as “Future Persona 4.0”, drawing inspiration from “Industry 4.0” - the 4th Industrial revolution. During the course of their education, their formal and informal learning experiences are designed to mesh together to create rounded and future-confident individuals with a “Digital Persona”, a “Professional Persona” and an “Entrepreneurial Persona”, all working together to help them not just navigate but thrive in a post-pandemic world. HCT now plays a leading role with the Council for Academic Accreditation in the UAE, to re-envision the educational standards that should apply in the post-COVID era. In recognition for Dr Al Shamsi’s work, HCT won Blackboard’s 2020 Global Catalyst Award for Training & Development.
For more Fierce Educators, see
Fierce Educator: Dr. Joanna Bauer, Claremont Lincoln University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Scott McNabb, Emory University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Palma Catravas, Montgomery College
Fierce Educator: Dr. Leslie Haas, Buena Vista University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Krishna Pakala, Boise State University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Ayman El Tarabishy, The George Washington University
Fierce Educator: Dr. Brian Maynard, University of Rhode Island
Fierce Educator: Dr. Kayunta Johnson-Winters, University of Texas at Arlington