Abstract
Since the turn of the 21st century, various institutions of higher education have been established in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, several of which are branches of universities from North America, Europe, Australia, and other regions. Quality education is currently a required component in the models of collaboration between Universities; yet the literature suggests that challenges remain in how the quality education will be practiced in a region that lacked for long time private universities. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation to determine what could be learned by studying the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation of a newly established institution in Oman, namely, Dhofar University. The case study focuses on the practicalities of DU’s external collaboration, national accreditation, and good practices University-wide and within the College of Engineering in particular. The paper aims to present and analyze challenges, good practices, faculty and staff experiences, and solutions that could be a useful pattern for similar institutions. The investigation builds on an internal University-wide self-study and an external review by an accreditation council.
Citation
Damaj, I.W. and Chaaban, F.B. (2014), "Dhofar University: a case study in the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation", Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 115-133. https://doi.org/10.18538/lthe.v11.n1.74
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014 Issam W. Damaj and Farid B. Chaaban
License
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Acknowledgements
Publisher's note: The Publisher would like to inform the reader that the article “Dhofar University: a case study in the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation” has changed pagination. Previous pagination was pp. 1-19. The updated pagination for the article is now pp. 115-133. The Publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused.