Examining contributing factors for the implementation of inclusion students with disabilities from the perspective of university academics in Saudi Arabia.

Inclusive education focuses on implementing education for individuals who do not follow typical learning trajectory and require special educational needs (SEN). Educational systems in many countries around the world, including Saudi Arabia, tend to implement and practise inclusive education in order to fulfill relevant international conventions and achieve educational standards of acceptable quality in educating children and young people with medical and neurodevelopmental conditions. This study seeks to reveal some of the factors that may help to overcome the obstacles faced in the implementation of inclusive education from the point of view of academics of special education in Saudi universities. To achieve this goal, the study used semi-structured interviews as its primary tool for data collection. Sixteen male and female faculty members specialized in special education in several Saudi public universities were interviewed. The data were analysed thematically. Two master themes were derived from the thematic analyses, 1) theoretical factors and 2) applied factors. Both master themes had several sub-themes. A number of factors were identified as helping to implement inclusive education thereby changing the behaviours and attitudes towards including students with disabilities Saudi context. It is suggested here that similar factors might exist in other countries in Middle East and beyond.

Perceptions of students and faculty on NCAAA-accredited health informatics programs in Saudi Arabia: an evaluative study.

BACKGROUND: As the healthcare sector becomes increasingly reliant on technology, it is crucial for universities to offer bachelor's degrees in health informatics (HI). HI professionals bridge the gap between IT and healthcare, ensuring that technology complements patient care and clinical workflows; they promote enhanced patient outcomes, support clinical research, and uphold data security and privacy standards. This study aims to evaluate accredited HI academic programs in Saudi Arabia. METHODS: This study employed a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional design utilising a self-reported electronic questionnaire consisting of predetermined items and response alternatives. Probability-stratified random sampling was also performed. RESULT: The responses rates were 39% (n = 241) for students and 62% (n = 53) for faculty members. While the participants expressed different opinions regarding the eight variables being examined, the faculty members and students generally exhibited a strong level of consensus on many variables. A notable association was observed between facilities and various other characteristics, including student engagement, research activities, admission processes, and curriculum. Similarly, a notable correlation exists between student engagement and the curriculum in connection to research, attrition, the function of faculty members, and academic outcomes. CONCLUSION: While faculty members and students hold similar views about the institution and its offerings, certain areas of divergence highlight the distinct perspectives and priorities of each group. The perception disparity between students and faculty in areas such as admission, faculty roles, and internships sheds light on areas of improvement and alignment for universities.

Difficulties and Challenges of EFL Simultaneous Interpretation Among Saudi Undergraduates.

Many Saudi interpretation students have challenges and difficulties during the study of simultaneous interpreting courses. Most Saudi students encounter interpretation difficulties due to inadequate training and the adoption of traditional teaching methods. This study aimed to investigate the challenges and difficulties that undergraduate simultaneous interpretation students in Saudi Arabia encountered and suggested the best solutions to address this issue. The study followed a mixed-method research design of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods to answer the research questions. The study sample was randomly selected from two Saudi universities (Najran University and King Abdul-Aziz University). Two research tools were used: a close-ended questionnaire for interpretation students and a semi-structured interview for translation professors. Responses to the questionnaire indicated that interpretation students face diverse challenges in language, curriculum, methodology, and training. Language difficulties encompassed struggles with interpreting terminology, handling long sentences, and keeping up with fast speech. Challenges related to curricula included issues of density, lack of clarity, and outdated simultaneous interpretation textbooks. Teaching method challenges were characterized by insufficient intensive training and a lack of technology-based interactive strategies. Interviews with professors highlighted additional challenges perceived by students, such as low proficiency and lack of motivation, expertise, background knowledge, equipment and labs. Professors recommended the following solutions: incorporating more practical and interactive interpretation activities, updating curricular content, offering skill-based training, and adopting modern interpretation techniques, equipment, and labs.

Faculty and Students' Perspective of Health Informatics Programs in Saudi Arabia.

Background: Health Informatics is a discipline that deals with the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of health data, information, and technologies for the purpose of improving healthcare quality. It involves the application of information science methods to analyse health information for improved problem solving and healthcare delivery. The use of information system applications in healthcare is increasingly popular and includes the use of applications like medical records, order entry, medical knowledge provision, imaging, as well as guidelines and other types of decision support. Aim: To examine health informatics undergraduate programs in Saudi Arabian government universities. Methods: This study follows a quantitative, descriptive cross-sectional design using a self-reported, electronic questionnaire. The data was collected using an online questionnaire via Google Forms. Probability stratified random sampling was utilized. Result and Conclusion: Findings revealed a response rate at 79% (n=184) of students and 67% (n=38) of faculty members. Variation was detected in the level of agreement toward the examined six variables. Both students and faculty members express same level of agreement toward all variables. A significant correlation was determined between facilities and other variables such as students' involvement, research, admission and curriculum. Similarly, there is a significant relationship between students' involvement and curriculum with research, demission, faculty members role and outcomes.

Barriers to Conducting and Publishing Scientific Research Among Nursing Faculty Members in Saudi Arabia.

Objective: Publication in highly indexed journals is a complicated process that requires research skills, including writing, conceptualizing, and communication skills, to appropriately verbalize the findings. The current study assessed the barriers faced by nursing faculty at Saudi universities in conducting scientific research and publishing in highly indexed journals. Methods: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study. Data were collected through convenience sampling by sending an online questionnaire to faculty members at Saudi universities. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first part for the demographic characteristics of staff and another part for the barriers associated with conducting scientific research and the publication process in highly indexed journals. The data was analyzed by SPSS using descriptive statistics as frequencies and percentages and inferential statistics using Chi Square test. Results: The study included 152 participants, mainly female (70.4%) aged 30-40 years (73.7%). Most were non-Saudi (90.1%), attended government universities (82.9%), and specialized in Medical & Surgical Nursing (29.6%). Only 3.9% received publishing training, whereas 55.9% had been published in indexed journals. Barriers included difficulties following guidelines, lack of research-writing knowledge, language challenges, and financial constraints. Gender, age, university, qualifications, and training courses influenced these barriers. Conclusion: The identified barriers included lack of training, language-related challenges, and work pressures. This study emphasizes the importance of providing support, resources, and training opportunities to overcome these barriers and enhance research productivity in the nursing field.

Learning organizations in Saudi universities: Implications for occupational therapy education.

In Saudi universities, the modern concept of acquiring, disseminating, adopting, and using information to improve organizational effectiveness through open systems of synergy among departments is hardly observed. This study aims to analyze the importance of organizational learning and the implications of applying its concepts in institutions of higher learning in KSA and occupational therapy education. We used secondary data obtained from a few studies that have assessed the adoption of learning organizations' concept in Saudi Arabian universities and occupational therapy educational programs and departments. The infrastructure has been improved to facilitate the adoption of the learning organizational concept under KSA's Vison 2030; however, a paradigm change is intensely needed where the adoption of the practice is acquired by faculty and staff members. Although organizational learning is essential for the survival and advancement of institutions of higher education as they are operating in a dynamic environment, it is hardly observed to be a part of the daily functioning in these organizations. The current study suggests that their opportunities that should be taken advantage of to implement these concepts in Saudi universities in general and occupational therapy education in particular.

Emergency remote teaching of foreign languages at Saudi universities: Teachers' reported challenges, coping strategies and training needs.

Though considerable research has been reported on COVID-19-related distance education, some dimensions of remote foreign language teaching experiences during the pandemic crisis remain to be explored. The study reported in this paper investigated Saudi university foreign language teachers' accumulated experiences and reflective beliefs of emergency remote instruction. The study focused specifically on: a) the general educational challenges the teachers encountered and their attempts to overcome them; b) the teachers' perceived difficulties in remotely teaching and assessing foreign language areas and their strategies for coping with them; and c) their reflective evaluation of remote foreign language teaching after doing it for three academic terms. Questionnaire data was collected from 112 teachers of Arabic and English as foreign languages, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 teachers. The analysis of both data types showed that the participants had a number of general educational and language-teaching-specific challenges in their COVID-19-related remote teaching. The teachers generally viewed the remote assessment of language areas is a more challenging task than teaching them. Reading was rated as the least difficult language area to teach and assess remotely, whereas writing was the most difficult one. The teachers reported using various coping strategies to overcome the educational and language teaching-specific challenges. They perceived their remote teaching experiences positively, but reported their needs for further training in developing better online assessment methods, using different teaching platforms and technological tools, and managing classroom interactions. The paper ends by discussing the results of the study and their implications.

Awareness of disability among saudi university graduates.

Awareness of disability is fundamental to creating equity for people with disabilities in any society. Because Saudi university graduates constitute an important part of society, this study aims to explore the level of awareness of disability amongst Saudi university graduates as well as the level of experience on disability as provided by their universities. A cross-sectional study was performed using a questionnaire developed by the researchers specifically for the purposes of this study. The questionnaire consisted of 4 sections, containing 39-items. Social media were used to recruit the participants and solicit responses: Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Upon analysis of the results, it was observed among all respondents (n = 449, male = 246, female = 203) that there was a lack of disability awareness. As such, there is a need to increase this awareness among university students in Saudi Arabia. There is also a fundamental need to provide some programs and/or courses about disability in Saudi universities. Moreover, there were statistically significant differences between gender, university type and university major. The study was limited to the Saudi context, and perhaps further research can deal with the major reasons for the awareness shortcomings, and may also cover other countries, singularly or comparatively, which would in turn yield better and more effective results. The study helps address the equality of people with disabilities where the result of the study can be used as the basis for further research on the topic.

The adoption of an e-learning system using information systems success model: a case study of Jazan University.

BACKGROUND: The e-learning system has gained a phenomenal significance than ever before in the present COVID-19 crisis. The E-learning delivery mechanisms have evolved to enhanced levels facilitating the education delivery with greater penetration and access to mass student population worldwide. Nevertheless, there is still scope to conduct further research in order to innovate and improve higher quality delivery mechanism using the state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICT) available today. In the present pandemic crisis all the stakeholders in the higher education system, i.e., the governments, institutions, and the students expect seamless and efficient content delivery via e-learning platforms. This study proposes the adoption of the e-learning system by the integration of the model proposed by Delon and Mcclean "Information System Success Model" in Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and further attempts to identify the factors affecting E-learning applications' success among the students. METHODS: The data were gathered from 568 respondents. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 26 (SPSS v.26.0) was used for the data analysis and one-way ANOVA is applied to test the hypothesis. RESULT: The overall results of this study allude to the fact that there is a significant relationship between Information system Success Model factors and the adoption of e-learning systems. The research results indicated that the information system success model has a strong associating cost-benefit value towards the adoption of e-learning systems across the Jazan University that may be further expanded to the other Saudi universities.

Women empowerment among academic and administrative staff in Saudi universities: A cross-sectional study.

Women in Saudi Arabia constitute nearly 50% of the population, but their participation in economic and social activities are far below the kingdom's potential. According to the 2030 vision, women empowerment is an essential requirement for community transformation and development. The study aims to explore women empowerment among academic and administrative staff in Saudi Universities. A cross-sectional research design was conducted at 15 Saudi governmental universities. A multistage cluster sampling technique was followed to select 5587 participants. The data collection starts from April to September 2020. The current study results illustrate statistically significant differences between academic and administrative staff in the total women empowerment score and all of its dimensions (p <0.05). The majority of academic staff (84.4%) have high personal empowerment compared to 73.7% of the administrative staff. The study concluded that women empowerment is higher among academics compared to administrative staff in Saudi Universities.

The challenges of instructors' and students' attitudes in digital transformation: A case study of Saudi Universities.

Digital Transformation (DT) has become the core motivator for almost all organizations worldwide. In order to cope up with the new demands, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are also giving due consideration to digitizing their services, including pedagogical services. Many challenges are being faced during the successful adoption of DT strategies and plans. One of the main obstacles is the set of challenges related to the stakeholders in HEIs; more precisely, instructors and students. This paper extracts, synthesizes, categorizes, and prioritizes the challenges hindering the success of DT in Saudi universities. Firstly, the paper extracts the main challenges faced by instructors and students, and then constructs a model of the challenges based on the tripartite classification of attitude. The paper adopts a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Method, called the Analytic Network Process (ANP), for the purpose of gathering instructors' and students' evaluations and prioritizing their challenges accordingly. A total of 25 instructors and students were recruited from various HEIs in Saudi Arabia to evaluate the model. The results show that learning performance, lack of access to resources, and fear of change are the most significant factors hindering students towards successful adoption of DT. On the other hand, fear of change followed by lack of experience and privacy concerns are the most significant factors hindering instructors towards successful adoption of DT. The research is intended to enlighten decision-makers in Saudi HEIs to consider non-technical challenges while planning for digitizing HEIs services.