So to our next speaker, if I was here about who
I can see there, I'm
is the assistant vice president for information technology
at the Notre Dame University
in Lebanon and holds the unicycle chair on or we are an open
educational resources for access and success.
Hello.
Hello. Hello.
Good evening, everyone.
Thank you, Tom, for this introduction.
Yeah, I come
from a private university in Beirut, Lebanon.
Oh, no, I'd had those days, you know, the south of Lebanon,
as you all know, hoping for the good.
Uh, my university is a small university
compared to all our colleagues.
You know, we're private.
The private university adopting the American system
of study and the.
You can see my state them.
Right. Well, thank you. Yeah.
I'm the assistant vice president for information technology
and the UNESCO's chair on oil for Access and Success.
What I will do
in my
presentation, I would share with you
the work I've been doing in Lebanon and in the Middle East.
You know, this is from a different perspective
just to to briefly,
you know, like acquaint our audience about,
you know, like the the higher education institution
and the main region or in the Middle East,
we have a diversity of institution which, you know, like we
we deferred them by either my sector, you know, the state
public nonpublic nonprofit university by appropriation.
They are affiliated with the Ministry of Education
or higher Education or maybe other ministry.
We have different the ones you know, by statute, you know, like
universities, colleges, technical institutes, community colleges or
by model, you know, like, for example, my institution
adopts, you know, the American
system of study.
But then Lebanon, you'll find also the French system of study,
of the German system of study.
So on and so forth.
And of course, you know, we have the cultural reference also.
This is an Islamic institution of this is a Christian institution,
not a religion. Well, this is a charity.
You know, how the the diversified, you know,
different type of universities in the Middle East.
The issue, you know, like the oil issue
and this is our topic, you know,
that if you if you look in the Middle East,
you know, in Lebanon and the Middle East, you know,
we don't have, you know, a lot of information about,
you know, the awareness and the perceived utility
of open educational resources and teaching learning and research.
Okay.
And if we look for data, you don't find much data.
You know, it's it's come you know, it's a very, very a very
a a small
amount of data concerning open education resources.
We have also a lack of in the regional collaboration.
I'm talking about our here, you know, the Middle East area.
And of course, you know, we have a culture of protecting
learning and teaching resources behind firewalls and password.
This is, you know, what dominates our landscape.
Okay.
So those are some of the issues that we have.
So let me stop you and I'll hold my journey.
I will share the,
you know, how I started with this all out initiative at the Notre Dame
University, my institution, the I participated
as a project in the United States called the Open Book Project.
That was back in 2014.
Well, about 15 leaders from the Middle East were invited
to the United States to understand more about this open movement.
Think what's happening and big institution
and the United States and like Google, so on and so forth.
And the objective of this open book project, which are jointly
initiated by the State
Department and by Alexa, which is the Arab
League educational, cultural inside the organization.
And the objective was to raise awareness of the potential of each
other and promote uptake of online learning material, supporting
the creation of Arabic language and open educational resources.
And, of course, you know, to offer the training for government
of official educator, so on and so forth.
This is, you know, that was back
in 2000 talking.
I love, as you know, my colleague Zainab
discussed in her presentation,
I do believe that the UNESCO's 2019
recommendation of a that was initiated.
It is a historic document. Why?
It is a historic document because Zainab said, you know, 193
countries voted on this recommendation.
Well, you know, we have five areas of action,
you know, from building capacity to supporting policies,
encouraging
inclusive and equitable quality of life, so on and so forth.
And of course,
and this is the commendation that I advise that everyone go
and look at this recommendation they have
defined told us
they give us two important definition.
One is for open educational resources and open licenses.
I want to emphasize here that all my work in Lebanon
and the Arab region is one aligned
with the UNESCO's recommendation.
Let me start
with what we have done at my institution
and how did I start this initiative and where we are now?
First of all, I started with awareness and capacity building.
The I am always on the goal, you know, giving workshops,
you know, on a daily basis since 2014.
And this is a very important step,
you know, involving all community and not from faculty, staff, student.
You know, I'm going to
classes, you know, the student where you find all.
Student To tell them about open, educational resources, open textbook,
open access, normal thing.
And of course, you know,
I conducted so many workshops for the library
and the library staff because I do believe that the library
can play a very important role in advocating for open
educational resources.
Then what we have done is we started a pilot.
The project was on
one of the faculties, our university at Southern Typekit,
which is the Faculty of the Humanities and this pilot,
and the result of the pilot and the
the data that we received from student
and instructor who are teaching using audio instead of traditional
textbook was very positive and encouraging.
That's why we expanded the scope to other faculties.
Now we have a open educational resource,
an open textbook in the physics department, mathematics department,
you know, in the engineering department at all level.
So it was this initiative was a very successful
initiative at the university level.
Moving on,
before we move on to other levels,
my strategy is simply, you know, like, you know, I use the,
as I said, the posters and multimedia awareness and capacity
building individual discussion,
part of the member conference presentation.
I send a lot of emails, announcement for our
community. So on and so forth.
And of course using the word what and the social media
that was, you know, just the my strategy
and advocating for real live.
What are some of the lessons that I have learned
you know supporting going on at the university level?
At my university,
first of all, you know, the faculty member should be convinced
about the benefits of all you are. Why?
Why I want to use oil, why I have to waste my time, you know,
trying to find resources, open textbooks, so on and so forth.
Well, you know, I can just, you know,
assign one of the traditional textbooks.
All they have to you are to convince them about
why it is important to use open educational resources.
Another important point is the quality of oil.
You know, and this is a very hot topic between faculty members
asking about where do we find the quality resources.
And another point and a very important
is the collaboration between faculty members was common interest.
For example, you know,
if you have a different faculty member teaching the same subject,
you know, it's very important for them to collaborate on this topic
that they are teaching using open education resources.
And of course, you know, you need to support faculty members
because they need the right tools, the technology,
so on and so forth, and of course the appropriate training.
So I can say from my experience throughout the year
that, you know, supporting effective oil adoption
at the university, at an institution, it is a difficult task.
You have to believe in it.
But I can tell you it's not an impossible
task to do.
All right.
So at the institutional level, if I want to recommend
something, an oil policy is very important.
And this is what we are doing now, though we are in our strategic plan
at the university and we are we formed a committee.
We are working on an oil policy and hopefully by January, February,
we will have an oil policy and institution level
incentive for instructor incentive.
It doesn't have to be monetary incentive.
It can be, for example, releasing a
course release, as we call it.
Yeah.
And if, for example,
you tell the professor, you know,
if you if you prepare your report using open educational resources
or open textbooks, then, you know, we will relieve you
from teaching one cost per semester, so on and so forth.
And of course you need a strategy to how to involve all
the stakeholders at
your university.
No, this is the institution level.
This is what they have done so far.
And it it proved to be very successful.
And I can say that we have a culture of openness
now at Notre Dame University.
Now, I said, okay, that's not enough.
I have to move and transfer the knowledge
we have to
other universities in Lebanon
and other universities in the region.
That's what we have done.
We have signed a memorandum of understanding between our university
and the Center for Educational Research and Development.
And the Center of Educational Reform and Development is the right arm
of the Ministry of Higher Education and Higher Education in Lebanon.
They are in charge of
designing,
creating the training, the curriculum for K to 12
student.
So that's what we have done for what they have done.
You know, I conducted
maybe more than 30 workshop capacity building for the training,
the trainers at the center or instructor
all level so that they will understand what open education,
what oil is, so on and so forth and the result of this.
And will you, between our university and the Center
of Educational Research and Development now
they have developed an oil policy.
I was supervising this initiative and we have they have an oil policy
in English and in Arabic, which are available.
It's available on the one plane they have now
an oil quality guide in English and Arabic.
And of course, they have an oil production workflow.
If somebody want to create an oil, what are the steps
that the help of all Shia people follow to create an oil?
Now, I don't know if you can if I open one of the
screens, I don't know if you can see it.
Can you see it?
Not you do.
Not yet.
Can you see the policy on the screen?
Them?
No, no, I can see the links on the slide.
Maybe you have to you can change your pocket window.
Okay. It's because it's not.
Yeah, that's fine.
So I wanted, you know, like to to show you a little bit
the different documents, but that's fine.
But maybe we don't have time.
But at the national level,
my next move will be to introduce
the open education and open movement
and open resources for the technical and and vocational training.
And this is hopefully after New Year, this will be my next
target at the regional level.
Regional level.
When I say regional level, I'm saying in all the
countries surrounding Lebanon, for example, Egypt,
Sudan, Kuwait, Oman, you know, I've been everywhere
giving a workshop,
you know, awareness campaign about open educational resources
and what we have done with UNESCO's Cairo office.
You know, we have developed an online course,
which is, you know, going to be in Arabic,
which followed what we called the, you know, school
to implement and the ICP CFT framework.
It is a competency framework.
But the important thing about this code that we have developed
is it is contextualized to the Egyptian
market, to the Egyptian
teachers needs in Egypt.
And I will not go through the see it is healthy
but it is the result of this online school
and the content will be all based on open education resources
and this project and this course, you know, will be
used by in-service and pre-service
teacher in K-12 in Egypt.
So those are the different modules of the course.
You know, like module two,
the power of openness using oil and open license in education.
It's going to be an English and in Arabic, those are the modules.
I will not go through the
the details of the module, but
that's it on the
regional level.
Now at the international level.
Okay.
And I, I want to emphasize that anything I'm doing here,
it is aligning well
with the next core recommendation from our MOUs capacity
building to creation of the policy to international collaboration.
And recently our colleague in the
before noon here, he talked about this column.
We we are part now of a network of shareholders
with the universities 16 universities
international from France, Brazil, Canada, Germany, New Zealand,
Tunisia, all over and of course from Spain, that this network, which
will be
officially announced very soon, it was approved by on this school.
The objective of this the a unit within that all the knowledge
sharing of open education between all both institution
at the international level, promote community building,
generate good quality research activities and program
and of course, the cooperation
with unions on a variety of programs and activities.
My future direction is to share our oil initiative
and experience at the national,
regional and international level.
I am in the process of launching
a research mechanism for Lebanon and the main region
to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of all we are.
But you know, and I'm doing it on the regional level
and of course, you know, continued the advocacy of all the way
out of Lebanon and domain of the region
to reach its full transformative potential
or supporting the realization of as did you for this is you know
also managing this oil Lebanon
website or laptop or where you know,
there are so many resources there.
But the most important is and this is my objective, is to collect
resources and documents about oil in Arabic language.
So I don't know if I have time them.
I hope I wanted to share the video.
2 minutes, video if I have time.
If not, that's okay. No, it's.
Okay.
It promises only 2 minutes.
It is. Talk about this.
Yeah.
I don't know if I shared the sound.
When I actually actually
said that camera video will be on the online
proceedings of the of the of this event.
So I think actually to this keep to strict timelines
election not to do that now but okay.
That's fine that's fine.
So well actually this video
uh, about Notre Dame University, the important thing
about the video after all this one that we have done, our institution,
you can hear
the chairperson, the deans, instructors and the students
testimonials about, you know, after using open
educational resources, open textbook what they are saying.
So that's fine. You know,
they can find it on YouTube.
Thank you very much.
This is all for now.
And this is my email and my Twitter account
and this is the reference to
Lebanon dot org. Thank you them.
And thank you very much.
Thank you.
That was very impressive.
I think so.
Being the assistant vice
president has helped you to actually move
these kinds of initiatives along because for a I'm
a base level teacher, it's not always the case.
But nonetheless, this is very good.
And I had several questions coming up.
I think you've answered all of them.
I was particularly impressed by the way
you actually incentivize the teachers by offering them
to reduce teaching load if they produce.
So we are as and
I think I could give us
a long conversation on that topic, but I'm
going to resist the temptation. Thank you very much.