Establishing a Palestinian Virtual Campus

 Rationale of the Project

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The proposed Project is particularly relevant to meet the needs and to overcome the difficulties encountered by the Palestinian universities at present by:

• Assisting Palestinian higher education institutions to cope with the increased demand for access. The number secondary school graduates who qualify to pursue education at the third level has kept growing constantly. The universities have been able to absorb large numbers (student enrolments have gone up to 140.000 at present)  but they lack facilities to admit even larger number on programmes delivered in the traditional mode. Using ODL and ICT technologies in general can help them meet this need. 
• Enhancing the quality of programmes and developing new ones in priority areas for national development.
• Surmounting the persistent difficulties created by the repeated closures of institutions and the obstacles to free movement of faculty and students. Indeed, the universities have gained some experience in overcoming these difficulties by offering programmes on the distance mode. It is proposed to develop further this capacity so as to function as a Palestinian Virtual University Campus;
• Engage Palestinian universities more actively in supporting the Palestinian Teacher Education Initiative launched by UNESCO through initial and in-service teacher training programmes offered on line;
• Further developing international academic ties of Palestinian universities with universities abroad.

Proposed Strategy of Action

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Action will start by further developing the capacity of the Avicenna Knowledge Center which has been set up through the Avicenna Project to act as its national focal point and service node. At the same time, infrastructure facilities and service capacities for ODL will be developed at the other Palestinian universities.
Subsequently, well-defined operational objectives and target figures will be set with respect to:

• training of managers and experts in e-learning and ODL resources at all Palestinian universities;
• training of course producers, tutors and teachers;
• ODL course production and distribution;
• training of students to use e-learning and ODL facilities and methodologies;
• setting up an on- line virtual library for Palestinian educational institutions.

The ultimate goal is to establish a Virtual Palestinian University, working in close partnership with the traditional universities and base don strong ties with similar institutions abroad, especially with those whose establishment had been supported by UNESCO.

UNESCO Chair on Open Distance Learning (ODL) in Palestine. It is proposed to set up a UNESCO Chair on Open Distance Learning (ODL) in Palestine, which should serve as the focal point for and catalyst for rallying support for the execution of the proposed Project.

Contribution of the PEACE programme. PEACE Programme member-universities will be asked to consider ways and means by which they could contribute to the implementation of Avicenna at Palestinian higher education institutions. In particular, they will be asked to:

• Provide assistance for the  training of personnel;
• Provide and seek assistance from their national authorities for equipping Palestinian universities with the specified equipment (i.e. ODL servers, knowledge information storage servers and data bases, etc.);
• Provide assistance in course provision (courses they could offer on line, co-production of new courses, translation and adaptation of available course material, etc.).