HCT Dubai Women’s College Become paper-free campus

HCT Women College Dubai

The Dubai Women’s College of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) has achieved a milestorne by completing its transformation into a paper-free campus as of this academic year.

This was successfully done through the implementation of more than 300 e-learning projects according to two e-learning specialists at the HCT.

The drive to create an e-environment campus is in line with the e-learning and e-government vision of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice- President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Michelle Housley, Supervisor of Education Technology at HCT Dubai, and Sharifa Hajjat, e-learning Coordinator at HCT Dubai, spoke to Gulf News about the steps and projects taken to help in this transformation.

“What we have done this year in all the colleges of Higher Technology is that we have taken away all the paper text books and replaced every single regular paper text book with an e-textbook that can be accessed using different mediums such as iPads, laptops and iPhones,” said Housley.

In order to give the students content that relates to the region, faculty and staff have created two e-earning books that provide content that is related to the UAE.

Sharifa explained: “In addition to the e-textbook supplied by traditional publishers, faculty and staff have created two e-text books that are a supplement to the traditional e-text books. They are developed with UAE context and examples so that students can relate more to the subject.”

Virtual online classes are the main focus of these projects. Sharifa said that for this reason a special programme has been designed to train faculty to implement effective virtual online classes.

“The Professional Online Instructor Certificate is a training programme that was developed in-house to train teachers in designing and managing online content for virtual classrooms. We have 65 faculty members benefiting from this programme which accounts for 50 per cent of the faculty in the women’s campus.”

After completing the programme the faculty will be tested by being asked to create a virtual class and engage students in it. If they succeed they will be awarded a certificate. “The faculty taking part in this programme must have an e-learning component. This usually applies to the business, health sciences and IT courses. Housley emphasised that all the projects introduced to students and faculty are backed by training and guidelines to ensure effectiveness. She added that there will also be a programme where faculty and student will be trained to become ‘gurus’ to answer any question regarding these projects.

Tracking student’s work

Since students and faculty will be connected online, professors will be able to track students’ use of their online content and view whether students have reviewed their courses online and for how long.

Housley said that this would allow educators to make better decisions regarding class, for example, should this topic be reviewed in class or have all students already reviewed it online. Based on the students’ use content development can be planned and adjusted accordingly.

Other e-learning projects include QR readers for maths classes where students use their mobile devices to uncode encrypted maths problems and ‘flip the class’ which deals with providing the students with the factual content prior to the class (usually in the form of a video or audio recording) and then using class time for hands-on activities instead of a lecture delivery.

Housley and Sharifa emphasised that strict measures will be taken to ensure that students will not take advantage of these new methods by cheating. “There will be programmes that check if students have plagiarised online and students will be monitored during examinations,”

They also added that extensive measures have been taken to ensure that the campus’s infrastructure is equipped to deal with these new technological advancements.