تفاصيل الوثيقة
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نوع الوثيقة |
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بحث مدعم |
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عنوان الوثيقة |
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Transformation Toward a World-Class University:Actions and Prospectives in the case ofKing Abdulaziz University (KAU) Transformation Toward a World-Class University:Actions and Prospectives in the case ofKing Abdulaziz University (KAU) |
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لغة الوثيقة |
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الانجليزية |
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المستخلص |
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This working paper illustrates the roles of world-class university in the age of knowledge. It is intended to review some of the many routes for developing KAU to transform into a quality higher education institution with its new envisaged hybrid identity. The paper concludes with some extracted lessons and recommendations for consideration.
In the era of knowledge, ICTs prolific developments, globalization, and focus on total quality, it became imperative that traditional universities have to encounter transformation, have shifts to be more responsive, and have to accentuate their capacities for meeting the changing and increasing expectation of university roles in societies.
Universities are the homeland of knowledge, the main engines for its development and enhancement in all areas of scientific creativity and innovation, and the agents of change to drive society into development and progress. Accordingly, universities cannot become static or indofent organizations, on the contrary, they should always endeavor to contemporaries, adopt development initiatives and seek to achieve continuous improvements, in order to raise the quality of their internal and external efficiencies. This should be implemented in the context of clear vision, mission, and well identified strategies.
For having an effective, future–oriented, and quality university, it is vital to continuously review its practices and performance regarding its roles. Though it is difficult to identify all the university roles in the era of knowledge. however, we can enumerate some role perspectives as follows:
- Building integrative and complementary university system,
- Focus on development as a priority, that is all categories of human resources,
- Developing effective university administration,
- Effective utilization of ICTs based on intense investment in their literacy.
- Widening the scope of governance and accountability,
- Effective assessment, evaluation, quality and accreditation.
- Focusing on research, creativity,and innoatian,
- Utilization of effective management techniques such as strategic planning and total quality management, business process reengineering (BPR), and systems thinking.
- Responsiveness to societal needs especially the increasing demand for higher education, and widening mutual cooperation with society corporations.
- Availing more learning choices and alternatives,
- Drawing on lessons from best practices.
- Orientation towards diversity and internationalization.
- Building a strong and positive institutional culture.
King Abdulaziz University (KAU) has been named by the name of the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is currently a dynamic and expanding higher education institution that is aspiring to be a more active agent of change, a value adding institution, a committed citizen to better serve the society, a beacon of knowledge through its educational and innovative research activities and a quality higher education institution with orientation to be competitive and international.
In 1964 the idea of establishing KAU was first initiated by a group of dedicated citizens. In 1967, it was founded as a private higher education institution. Finally, in 1973, KAU became a public institution due to its need for expansion and public funding. Presently, KAU is the largest university in Saudi Arabia that has about (120.000) students, (4500) teaching staff, mae then (4000) administrative and technical staff, and it hafda hundreds of departments and programs for tertiary education in different disciplines.
Six years ago, KAU started its challenge to make a story of success shifting old practices, developing a new identity, recalibrating its roles, building capacities, reversing the pattern of wastage and underachievement, following effective management techniques, meeting quality standards, and benefiting from best practice lessons. To Fulfill the promise, KAU has charted its first strategic plan which reflected vision and goals that were far to reach and require dramatic functional, structural and cultural institutional changes.
By that time, a number of action research exploratory studies, workshops, and society reflection on KAU outputs had made the evidence clear that KAU educational system, its quality, and its ability to innovate are inadequate to meet the challenge and irrelevant for KAU to cross to the future to become a quality internationally ranked higher education institution.
Though, we at KAU search for and study to benefit from the experiences and best practices of other universities from all corners of the globe, we believe that what best suits other universities would not necessarily fits KAU. So we recon that KAU has its unique culture and assets that require to build our own equation depending on customized approaches.
So KAU has started to re-focus its vision and mission to develop orientations towards new identity for the future. Through collaborative dialogue, KAU has chosen to be a multi-faceted hybrid university. Its traditional identity as a comprehensive large numbers university will be maintained while emphasizing new facets as electronic, research, and entrepreneurship university. Such future prospective, has necessitated drastic change and transformation. In this context, KAU has launched a wave of initiatives covering nearly all the envisaged perspectives and prospective. To pursue and promote development endeavors, KAU established a Vice-Presidency for Development (VPD) to strengthen the university capability for advancement as a quality university that matches the international standards of quality in the advanced world.
At KAU, we have abstracted and absorbed the lessons from best practices, so we have solemnly believed that the main long lasting theriaca rests in human resources. So, our hunan resouncn develoment HRD strategy from the outset have kept the balance for development among different categories whether teaching staff, administrators or research and technical staff. As students are our valuable output, we have kept them on top of the list for development. At KAU, we believe that keeping that balance and having sufficient and efficient HRD activities will form a solid platform for quality university education and synergistic performance.
Human resources (HR) represent the main pillar for any nation progress, and represent their real wealth. In addition – on the university level - it is the main asset, the most important resource with highest value among other resources, and the main achieving factor for objectives, competitiveness, and value. The recent concept of human intellectual capital (IC) reflects the elite of human resources that have excellent intellectual skills, abilities, and experiences that enable them to contribute intellectually, deal positively with situations and maximize the strength points to raise value and outcomes.
Recognizant of the vital roles of human resources on both macro and micro levels, continuous development becomes a priority. Human resources development HRD in the context of universities is a strategy that has many perspectives relating to the internal and external environments. The internal environment holds academic staff, administrative and technical staff, and students. The external environment holds the students connected to distance learning programs. Each category should have an effective agenda for development al activities.
HRD becomes the dynamic solution that can enhance educators competencies for producing world-class education. Deep and pervasive programs should continually be initiated for teaching staff to maintain currency of knowledge and update in practices. Succeeding in positively building high quality university educators, we can develop our students in a way to represent a valuable, creative, and innovative addition to their country. Quality of education gives to nation's people more opportunities in their lives, and therefore they have a greater capacity to contribute to the countries social and economic success.
KAU is embarking largely on open and distance learning based mainly on multimedia-rich e-learning. Advanced ICTs are gradually manipulated to reach far distances in Saudi Arabia. It will professionally provide education, training and development, and lifelong online learning services. Such initiative will support KAU efforts for human and social development. Soon, the system will be backed with a satellite interactive TV channel. For the face-to-face learning on campus, steps are taken to enrich the teaching process by e-learning courses. All adjacent services required for that type of learning are electronic. There also a strong impetus to utilize e-learning to extend distance learning in graduate studies programs, for which exploratory research has been conducted and has shown great expectancy and readiness to join such programs.
In addition, KAU is utilizing the concepts of electronic management in all its administrative departments, services, procedures, and information. The ICTs orientation and application has necessitated that such technologies become embedded in administrative, teaching and learning structures for administrative and academic staff and students. So, KAU worked hard for both developing a positive and viable organizational culture and climate from one part, and aligning ICTs potent capabilities and complexities to our functions and people capacities on the second part. Nearly all university classes have been equipped with multimedia technology. A big initiative for electronic detailed course portfolio has been launched and about to be completed for practice in unventey wie as tool for active teaching and leaning .
KAU can expect a continuing rapid pace of development in information technology instruction as incoming students will increasingly be more technology – literate and expect more sophisticated applications of technology to increase access and enhance learning. As KAU is moving steadily on the IT track, we expect that our educators, students, and administrators will be more ICTs dependent during the years to come. Active application of ICTs has privileged KAU with rewards, benefits, and excellence rank. It has been named as the leading university among all other Saudi universities.
One important concern connected to ICTs application at KAU is enhancing the quality of handling data, information, and metrics of KAU for quality decision making, calculation of KAU key performance indicators (KPI) which are in its early application. It is planned for using benchmarking as a guide for KAU performance. Designing online institutional repositories and date warehouses and well-managing them as a KAU commitment to stewardship of all digital material including long-term preservation and access.
KAU considers the student as an internal customer of great potent value for his university and his country. As KAU is committed for his learning and academic success, it is dedicated to have a positive and a strong grounded university culture and to provide conditions and balanced environment that stimulates the student highest potential. In such flexible and caring environment, the student enjoys good opportunities for involvement with campus and engagement in meaningful learning experiences. During his study period the student can acquire a motivating purpose, communication and critical thinking and problem solving skills. This is in addition to building a mature self-aware personality with responsible citizenship virtues enabling him to be capable of serving the society.
Universities operate on certain pillars, most important of which is their faculty members. We at KAU consider the challenge of preparing our teaching staff who will educate our students today and impart to them the knowledge and skills to actively learn in order to effectively participate in a demanding and increasingly global world of work and civic engagement. In the meantime, we consider the strategic importance of capacity building of faculty members. So, many training programs are organized for them all the year around in the Center for Teaching and Learning Development (CTLD). Other training programs are introduced by the "Initiative for innovation and excellence Development Programs" that was launched by the Ministry of Higher Education. Such initiative is in its third year since its inception.
KAU utilize all its value drivers and potential capabilities to energize the performance of all its sectors. The main route for that is through the initiative of teaching thinking and developing and encouraging creativity and idea generation. This initiative is meant to transform KAU into a thinking university. For students curricula, it is being developed to have thinking based learning coupled with student thinking clubs. For staff members, many techniques and mechanisms are utilized to promote and foster the intellectual practice of idea and initiative generation. One of the main techniques is starting Think Tank Groups (TTG) that will soon expand to generate creative ideas and initiatives and provide new solutions possibilities for change. TTGs are expected to functionalize the thinking capacities of about all staff members representing the human intellectual capital of KAU, in addition to tahe administrative officers. It is intended to establish an idea bank and develop an effective motivation and rewarding system for active thinkers in KAU.
One of KAU areas of concern in this period of time is to concentrate on developing the identity facet of KAU as entrepreneurship university. Two main aspects for this endeavor are educational and business entrepreneurship. The educational aspect requires to continue in developing curricula in all KAU schools. This will help in fostering and developing students business orientation which reflect on activating and adding to the capacity of the private sector. Business entrepreneurship is newly developed activity at KAU through incubators, both business and scientific.
One of the main routes for development is the concentration on accreditation and quality, KAU is heading towards full academic accreditation of its programs during the coming five years, presently (25%) has been achieved. Institutional accreditation will start next academic year both through local and international accrediting bodies. Non academic accreditation has been effected to both the blood centre and lately the Medical Center. Recognizant of the importance of the quality of administrative aspect at KAU, about (10) quality certificates of ISO 9001-2000 has been granted to different units at KAU. The route of accreditation and quality continues as a success story.
Building on the strategic planning culture, outcomes, and achievements of the First Five Years Strategic Plan, we believe that we have established a solid platform to proceed in setting our second five year strategic plan (2010-2015) which is carefully designed.
KAU highly merits the orientation towards promoting and expanding its international presence and cooperation. Many mechanisms serve this direction which are currently in effect of which : exchange of visits, cooperation and twinning agreements, joint research, the international advisory board of KAU.
One of the essential routes relating to the orientation towards KAU identity as a research university. As this is a wide area of concern, we brief the subject into the following areas: increasing the amount of public fund allocated for research; soliciting endowed scientific research chairs; endowment funds for research; establishing six research centeres of excellence; promoting conducting research and its publication; investing in laboratory and research capabilities; research prizes; and research parks.
As a concluding note, it was not possible to review all aspects, routes, and initiatives of development, though this detailed abstract. However, KAU has grown during the last six years to quadruple in size with deep concern for quality and achievement which assured that KAU is moving in the right route to shift and reconstruct KAU to desired ends. |
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سنة النشر |
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1430 هـ
2009 م |
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عدد الصفحات |
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9 |
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تاريخ الاضافة على الموقع |
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Friday, January 22, 2010 |
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الباحثون
| أسامة صادق طيب | Taib, Osama S. | باحث رئيسي | دكتوراه | |
| زهير عبدالله دمنهوري | Damanhouri, Zoheir A. | باحث رئيسي | دكتوراه | |
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الرجوع إلى صفحة الأبحاث
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