What Universities in the Middle East Can Learn from the American Online Education System ?

: In this paper the author, provides insights and lessons that can be learned from colleagues at American universities about their online education experiences. The literature review and previous studies of online educations gains are explored and summarized in this research. Emerging trends in online education are discussed in detail and strategies to implement these trends are explained. The author provides several tools and strategies that enable universities to ensure the quality of online education. At the end of this research paper, the researcher provides examples from Arab universities who have successfully implemented online education and expanded their impact on the society.


INTRODUCTION
conducted by the U.S. Department of Education [6], it was With the advance of emerging instructional than students who were enrolled in face-to-face courses.technologies, online education has become a popular The study also found that learning outcomes for online option in the United States (U.S).Online education is a learning exceeded those of face-to-face classes.The learning technique that uses the World Wide Web study recommended using technologies in on-campus (WWW) and its applications to deliver the content of a classes to achieve the highest benefits from learning learning session or training.The flexibility and other outcomes [6].These types of classes are called blended advantages provided by online education has encouraged or hybrid.It was estimated, in a study conducted by the American students to take classes via the Internet.In the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), that same way, American universities have used online 28.5 % of American students take online learning courses education as one way to survive budget cuts and at the post secondary level [7].Docebo [8] predicted that economic recessions by reducing their needed physical the market for online learning would grow by 5% between resources, such as labs and buildings [1,2].

Successful experiences of online education i n
The impact of online education has affected most American universities and those around the world universities in the world, including in the Middle East continue to support its growth and, therefore, have also area.The impact of the online education movement is increased the budget allocation for online education relatively low in the Middle East compared to the programs [3].The success of online education has even universities in the US.This low impact is due to the late encouraged traditional universities to replace their adopting of the Internet and its technological traditional campuses and programs with virtual campuses infrastructure in these countries [8].However, some by creating environments of online or blended classes.
universities have been trying very hard to keep up with In 2015, Babson Survey Research Group conducted this new trend in education.In 2013, the Minister of a study about online education in the U.S and found that Higher Education at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) university leaders consider online learning a crucial considered interactive online education equivalent t o strategy to their institutional growth and this perspective traditional education programs [9].On the other hand, has increased from 48.8% in 2002 to 70.8% in 2015 [4].
other countries in the Middle East are still not accepting This percentage dropped in 2016 to 63.3% [5].In a study the idea of online degrees and they are considering that found that students in online courses performed better World Appl.Sci.J., 37 (7): [609][610][611][612][613][614][615][616][617]2019 this type of education is low quality compared t o in several ways.Faculty would have more time to engage traditional education [10,11].Therefore, these countries would not approve online degrees as equivalence t o traditional ones.The reality is that online courses are considered more challenging than traditional ones [12].For example, to ensure students engagement, online faculty require more reading activities than the ones required in traditional courses.

Online Educations Gains and Benefits:
There are many benefits and advantages that can be gained from online education.These gains are for students, faculty and institutions.Online education helps students to have more control over their learning process, as they would start the lecture and course material at their convenience and it is not restricted by time or physical location [13].Students would be able to build a study schedule that suits them and based on their availability and, therefore, they would benefit more this way.Students in the rural areas would enjoy taking classes from home, as it would be challenging for them to attend an on-campus lecture.These gains are not available in traditional education.
The other benefit of online education from the students' perspective is the cost.Students enrolled in online degrees can reduce the cost burden of education [14].For traditional education, tuitions are not the only costs for credits.Other costs associated with traditional education are housing, food and transportation [15].With online education, these costs are eliminated due to the fact that students can take classes while they are sitting at home.Another important point related to the cost is that most institutions offer online courses for lower tuition compared to traditional education due to no physical resources needed for online students.Giving free laptops and all software needed to online students is a common practice in American universities [16].This also adds savings for students who decide to enroll in online programs.
Diversity is another benefit of online education.A student can be part of a diverse group of students from all around the world [13].This would help students understand other cultures' perspectives and norms.Diversity in a classroom would enable students to be open to new ideas, think out of the box and become more creative, not restraining with their own ideas.Diversity is also essential to career preparation.Having students from all around the world would encourage students to enter the global job market and have better opportunities securing a high paid job.
Faculty can also benefit from teaching online courses in developing instructional activities and this would result in improving their teaching performance [17].Teaching from anywhere is another enjoyable feature that faculty can have if they decided to teach online courses [18].They could travel to conduct research and, at the same time, teach classes online.The Internet has eliminated the restriction of having faculty physically exist in the building to teach classes.Online education provides faculty with flexibility and, therefore, faculty can efficiently manage their time and achieve more of their career and life goals.Technological tools can also save faculty time and become more efficient [19].For example, online quizzes can be graded instantly and no time is needed from faculty other than developing quizzes online.
Effective feedback can also be easily provided online and within a reasonable period.Students in online classes also have the opportunity to express their opinions freely without being shy, as they might be in a face-to-face class [20].The rich discussion environment of an online course is replete with deeper and more reflective opinions [21].Such an environment helps faculty to know students at a deeper level and build strong connections with them.This further helps faculty to evaluate students' performance in the virtual environment accurately.Having students from around the word participating in online classes also improves faculty communication skills by encouraging them to develop global communication techniques of thinking to address a global audience.
Public education institutions use online education to accommodate the demands of those who are interested in earning higher education credits [22].This strategy eliminates the need for building new facilities to meet demand.Online education, in other words, helps institutions to expand and accept more students without the need to invest in physical facilities.In a 2025 strategic plan study conducted for the Florida State University System [23], it was estimated that the system would need $184.3 million dollars to build classrooms for their face-toface students in the next five years.This cost can be avoided by offering courses fully online [23].
There are countless benefits that can be gained from the online education.These benefits include increasing student access to learning material, improving student quality of learning, better preparing students for life skills, providing increased learning opportunities and many more.

The Limitations of Online Education:
This section includes a discussion of the difficulties that may be faced when adopting online education from the viewpoints of commitment from faculty to address students concerns students, faculty and institutions.
Students may have difficulty taking online courses due to alack of readiness to address this learning environment [24].Readiness is important to student success in online education.Readiness can b e demonstrated by having the necessary technology (e.g., Internet access and a laptop) available to students and supporting their ability to use these technologies.Another aspect of readiness is self-discipline, or selfdirected motivation.This means that students need to have excellent time management and organization skills to be able to finish course work on time [13].Having no direct connection with instructors and other students in the course makes online education difficult and requires relatively more patience when engaging in the course and its activities [25].Students may also feel lonely and unsupported during the online learning process [26].Their engagement and participation in class activities is completely self-directed and no one can encourage them to participate but themselves.Finally, yet importantly, technical difficulties might cause frustration and discouragement for online students if there is no technical support available to them [27].In synchronous classes and during real-time class activities, video conference, software upgrades, plug-ins and network issues may occur and prevent students from participating.Faculty, therefore, should be prepared to deal with these issues in order to enable students to participate in synchronous sessions.
Online environments are also challenging for faculty.Just as student readiness is key, faculty should also be ready to use the required technologies [28].Workshops and training sessions are required to ensure faculty readiness to teach online classes.Faculty should be given the needed training and time to become proficient in using instructional technology and i n becoming online developers and instructors [29].Having faculty who are not fully trained to teach online courses may lead to ineffective learning experience due to poor course management and inadequate communication with students.Another important point is that faculty need adequate time to design online courses and prepare written or video instructions for their students [30].This time can be part of the faculty teaching load, with no additional compensation offered.Institutions, however, may offer grants and incentives to have their faculty design and develop new online courses during the summer sessions.Responding to individual emails and communication is also time consuming and requires extra [31].Responses to students might not be instant, a s instructors may take a few days to reply to them.Students, however, are usually looking for quick responses from their instructors and late responses may discourage them from participation in the class or asking another question.If an online instructor has difficulty finding the time to respond to students' questions, this may affect students' engagement, as they could feel ignored.
The main challenge of offering online courses, from institutions' perspectives, is the high initial investment cost [23].The first cost of implementing the online infrastructure and strategies is very high due to the time spent developing the course and the need for online tools.A cost-benefit study conducted by the University of British Columbia (1999) found that the first offering of one of their classes was 75% over budget [32].This cost significantly decreased in subsequent offerings because most of the online infrastructure is in place, resulting in no need to invest in major tools until the next system upgrade, usually in 3-5 years.The cost also decreases when student enrollments increase for a specific course [30].Additional costs are needed to offer training for faculty to gain new strategies for teaching online courses.
Offering training for faculty is necessary because i t increases the level of faculty readiness and ensures the effectiveness of the learning experience.Through such training, faculty are equipped to face challenges and provide a positive experience to their students.Online instructional technologies require institutions to hire a technical support team to help faculty and students with the challenges that they might face during their online journeys [33].This additional cost is additional to the cost of online education, but it is necessary ensure a positive and engaging environment free of technical issues, especially in synchronous learning sessions.With rapid technological changes, institutions should be investing in the best online instructional technologies available.Therefore, it is necessary for institutions to have a clear plan for purchasing and upgrading their systems and technologies every three years, at the most, to gain the best advantages from technologies.
Emerging Trends in Online Education: Online education emerged in the year of 1993 with the emergence of web services and the World Wide Web (WWW).Since then, the face of education, in general and online education, in particular, have dramatically changed due to rapid developments in instructional technologies.Four of the newest trends in online education are discussed in this and universities be accessible to all students section.

C
Open Educational Resources (OER): One of the trends in education in general and in online education, in particular, is toward making the educational material (e.g.technologies, media and textbooks) available free of charge for all individuals who are interested in the subject [34].One form of Open Educational Resources (OER) is the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), an initiative that offered unlimited courses online.MOOCs started in 2011 when American universities began to offer courses on platforms such as Udacity [35].There are thousands of courses available to students to be taken for free.These courses are designed b y providing short video lectures, followed b y automated multiple-choice quizzes, to ensure students' understanding of the module content.The Quality of Online Education: Flexibility in learning provides a great advantage to students, but the high quality and effectiveness of courses are also important to them and to industry.With the growth of online education, policies, standards and guidelines have been created to ensure the rigorous application of the education process.The following are some of the practices that are used to ensure high quality online education:

C
Accreditation: Accreditation is one tool of evaluation that ensures the high quality of online programs.Accrediting agencies develop standards to evaluate the level of quality of online programs [44].The accreditation team uses sets of standards related to such areas as academic and student support, technical support, faculty credentials, technological infrastructure, faculty and student resources and administrative resources.Accreditation improves the reputation of institutions and this helps to improve the enrollment rates, as students prefer to enroll in programs that are accredited over programs that are not [45].

C
Quality assessment measures: Quality Matters (QM) is anon-profit organization that has created assessment rubrics and measures to evaluate the quality of online courses [44].QM rubrics consist of as learning objectives, assessment and measurement, Middle East, these days there is a better understanding instructional materials, learner engagement and of online education and its need to make an impact on the interaction and course technology.Three trained education sector.Many Middle Eastern countries are reviewers conduct the QM review process.The considering this learning option and many universities reviewers evaluate courses from students' have hosted conferences related to online learning.perspectives and then provide suggestions on how The next section provides a discussion of two examples to improve them.The following chart explains the of Arab countries that have implemented online education QM review process for online and blended courses: successfully.Arabic.In this phase, the university established a C The belief that on-campus resources and publishing venue to help them create course content, infrastructures are enough for the demand and that material and textbooks to learners in their mother language there is no need for supplemental solutions such as [48,50].The last phase was monitoring, controlling and offering online education; improving the process.The last phase was important to C Corruption and bureaucracy hinder establishing implementing continuous improvement practices in their online programs.learning process.Recently, their name was changed from Despite the slow adoption of online learning in the aspiration of becoming "a university of first choice in the United Arab Emirate (UAE): Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University Dubai (HBMSU) is the first virtual institution in the Arab world, established in 2002 [46].The Ministry of Higher Education in the UAE accredited HBMSU as a research university [47] that offers learning experiences using advanced technologies such as mobile learning, online classrooms, discussion blogs, simulation games and social networking.The university underwent numerous challenges before implementing online education successfully.The first phase was pursuing their accreditation.When the university started in 2002, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR) did not have accreditation standards for the University of Bradford, UK, to offer joint programs meet the needs of their programs.The third phase was environment that encourages students to discover, "e-university" to "smart university" to achieve its Arab World [51]."The name change included changing the Middle East.One example of a collaboration has have the strategic plan to keep up with the latest advances in been done in the Middle East area is that between the technological innovation.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA): The Saudi Organization (UNESCO) and HBMSU in Dubai [58].This government offered online courses for the first time in also can be achieved by offering joint programs with 2002 [52].These courses are designed for people who are American universities that have experience with offering interested in technical and vocational training.In order to online programs.The period for offering joint programs ensure the success of this program, Center of e-learning can be considered training experience for those training resources is established and created an electronic universities which are interested in offering online library with more than 50, 000 books and 3, 000 training programs for the first time.This period will help them to programs [53].In 2003, universities such as Um Al-Qura avoid any challenge that they might face once they are University and King Fahad University of Petroleum on their own.Step four is to work with administrators to and Minerals established e-learning centers to support establish standards, guidelines and regulations that traditional programs to benefit from instructional ensure the quality of online programs offerings.The last technology by offering blended courses [54].In 2007, the step is to establish quality assurance programs to ensure National Center for E-learning (NCEL) was established the continuous improvement of the learning process for to support e-learning systems, but there was no online the online programs.The following chart summarizes this programs offered or accredited [55].In 2009, the Ministry strategy.of Higher Education and NCEL organized the first international conference about e-learning and announced their acceptance of online programs [56].Later, in 2010, the Ministry of Higher Education officially approved the online programs offered in the Saudi universities [52].In 2011, the Saudi Electronic University was established as the first electronic university in the country to offer fully online and blended programs with collaboration from institutions such as eCampus Ohio University, University of Phoenix, Franklin University, Capella University and Walden University [57].Now, the university is in the process of achieving accreditation by national and international organizations to improve their quality of education and keep up to date with advancements in technologies.

Strategy to Implement Online Education:
In this section, Fig. 2: Model for Implementing Online Education a 5 -step strategy for establishing online programs i s provided.This strategy might help institutions in the CONCLUSION Middle East to start their online programs.The first step is establishing a committee that consists of members of Developing new online programs in Jordan and universities that value online education and have the the Middle East could be a challenge, but having a passion to achieve this goal.This committee will act as well-established technology infrastructure would make a consummate resource to promote online education.
the process less challenging.Most Arab universities are The second step is to meet with administrators t o offering blended courses as a strategy to enhance the convince them of the impact of online education on the quality of their traditional courses.Also, there are many society and explain the quality processes that can academic programs offered with collaboration from ensure the rigor of the education process.Step three is to experienced universities in the US and Europe.The develop collaboration with international and national researcher believes that universities in the Middle East are organizations.This collaboration will help to secure the ready to implement online programs.The next step will be funds needed to purchase technological infrastructures establishing government guidelines and standards t o and train faculty and students.Many international regulate the establishment of online programs and to organizations are offering funds to support education in ensure their high quality.Once these policies are in place, interested institutions should offer training to their faculty 11.Mirza, A.A. and M. Al-Abdulkareem, 2011.Models and students.Pursuing accreditation and collaboration with assessment organizations should be included in their strategic plans and should be achieved within 3-5 years.Monitoring and improving practices is important t o ensure the continues improvement of the learning process and to keep up with emerging technologies.

Fig. 1 :
Fig. 1: Quality Matters Review Process online programs.Therefore, HBMSU had to partner with