01 Oct Higher Education and K12 Online in Saudi Arabia

In partnership with the Online Learning Consortium, the National eLearning Center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and other partners, we worked to develop the instrumentation for multiple stakeholders in higher and K12 education in 2020 for phase I of a national study. In this study, phase II, we develop a similar survey to examine satisfaction of different stakeholders to guide decision-making. The sample including students, faculty, staff, and administrators in higher education and student, parents, teachers, staff, and administrators in K12 education. It measured their perceptions of different components of online learning.

Survey instrumentation was developed based on a scan of other instrumentation and tools, including national and international products, literature, and recent research relevant to the dimensions and subdimensions. Survey items were developed to measure the participants’ attitudes, opinions, and beliefs about online learning at their institutions, to assess the performance of the institutions and different functions of the institutions to support online learning and quality, and to identify areas of challenge and opportunities for improvement in future academic terms. All survey items are considered to have both construct and content validity.

In the higher education and K12 surveys, these components included:

Leadership and Readiness
Curriculum Design and Planning
Online Teaching and Learning
Assessment
Technology
Student Support
Training and Support
Evaluation and Continuous Improvement

The components were developed based on components found in the literature on quality in online education.

In the higher education survey, there were 66,637 completed surveys, including 3,363 administrators, 15,568 faculty and instructional staff, and 45,706 students. Participants represented a wide geographic spread of regions, cities, and institutions.  In the K12 survey, a total of 385,957 members of the Saudi Arabia education community (students, parents, teachers, and administrators) participated.

Findings include descriptive statistics for general and overall satisfaction, student experience with instructional and learning effectiveness, and faculty experience with instructional and learning effectiveness. It also included perceptions of or attitudes towards leadership, curriculum and design efforts, human and technological infrastructure, comparable course modalities, expansion of online programming, and satisfaction with COVID-19 response.

Based on the survey findings, we developed a series of recommendations for higher education:

Recommendation 1: Core Infrastructure Enhancement
Recommendation 2: Faculty and Professional Development
Recommendation 3: Online Learning Readiness Assessment
Recommendation 4: Communication Within and Across Organizations
Recommendation 5: Update Policies and Standards for Online Learning

The recommendations and insights from the data can help inform decision-making.

In K12 education, we developed recommendations as well based on the data and the findings:

Recommendation 1: Technology Access
Recommendation 2: Time Management and Online Learning Readiness
Recommendation 3: Online Teacher Professional Development
Recommendation 4: Update Policy, Regulations, and Standards

Slightly different than the recommendations for higher education, again, these can inform decision-making.

Read more on the OLC website and download the HIGHER EDUCATION REPORT and the K12 EDUCATION REPORT.

To view the 2020 reports to review the instrumentation we developed for the national studies, you can download the The State of Online Learning in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A COVID-19 Impact Study for K12 and The State of Online Learning in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A COVID-19 Impact Study for Higher Education