Jordan/OER

For additional information on online, distance and open learning in higher education in Jordan, see the report File:Opening Up Education in Jordan Edition 2.pdf.

Overview

Jordan (Arabic: اَلأُرْدُنّ‎ Al-ʾUrdunn), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Arabic: اَلمَمْلَكَة اَلأُرْدُنِيَّة اَلهَاشِمِيَّة‎ al-Mamlakah al-ʾUrdunniyyah al-Hāšimiyyah), is an Arab kingdom in the Middle East, on the East Bank of the River Jordan, and extending into the historic region of Palestine. Jordan borders Saudi Arabia to the south and east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and Israel to the west, sharing control of the Dead Sea with the latter. The capital is Amman and the population is 6,508,887.

Further information

For further general information see Wikipedia:Jordan/OER.

Education in Jordan/OER

For a general description of education in Jordan/OER see Education:Jordan/OER.

e-learning

For a description more focussed to online learning see the Re.ViCa/VISCED country page on Jordan - E-learning:Jordan/OER.

For a 2014 update to this for higher education (including OER and MOOCs) see File:Opening Up Education in Jordan Edition 2.pdf

OER Initiatives in Jordan/OER

There has been some involvement in Jordan with open access publishing, details of which are reported by UNESCO here: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/access-by-region/arab-states/jordan/

The Jordan Open Source Association proposed and gained funding from Creative ommons for an Arabic OER platform, due to be launched in 2010: http://jordanopensource.org/article/arabic-oer-platform-start However, it is not clear whether this plan was successfully carried through.

National OER initiatives

In 2010, the Jordanian Minister of Education announced Jordan's intention to start BLOSSOMS II in ten selected high schools. "BLOSSOMS (Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies) is an Open-education initiative started by MIT in partnership with Jordan and Pakistan", and "has been designed as an Open Educational Resource (OER) consisting of web-based materials offered freely and openly for re-use in teaching, learning and research." (http://linc.mit.edu/news/2010/blossoms032910.html)

Update in 2014

The POERUP 2014 report File:Opening Up Education in Jordan Edition 2.pdf summarises the current situation as follows:

OER for Jordan is something which it has yet to fully establish’ however an example of resources can be taken from the University of Jordan which provides free and open e-learning courses that can be found without logging into their Moodle e-learning platform. How Computers Work is one free course for perusal and Water Science is another.

A MOOC platform was agreed for launch in November 2013 as part of Queen Rania Al Abdullah’s initiatives under The Queen Rania Foundation.

The Jordan Open Resource Association successfully proposed an Arabic Open Educational Resources Platform which was originally due to be launched in June 2011. The platform is still yet to launch but will eventually provide free use of all uploaded learning materials. A further report of the portal’s imminent arrival was mentioned in December 2013 by UNESCO on their Global Open Access Portal page.

References

• File:Opening Up Education in Jordan Edition 2.pdf by Charlotte Doody and Paul Bacsich
• http://ujelearning.ju.edu.jo/TLWT/TLWT.aspx and http://ujelearning.ju.edu.jo/WSS/ch1.swf
• http://www.queenrania.jo/media/press/queen-rania-witnesses-signing-agreement-launch-mooc-portal-arab-world-edrak
• http://jordanopensource.org/article/arabic-oer-platform-start
• http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/access-by-region/arab-

Reports

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