Abstract
Strategies for teaching engineering in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been evolving over the past decades due to innovations in technology, as well as the development of educational methodologies. In the recent past, the focus for engineering faculty has been not only on promoting the skills needed to raise the level of employability of Emirati graduates, but increasingly on new educational methodologies, e-learning and wireless networked laptop technology. Students in the UAE exhibit certain characteristics emerging from a variety of cultural and historical traditions, as well as from methodologies of education used at the pre-tertiary levels. These characteristics include expecting to be passive recipients of taught information, and lack of independence in their approach to problem solving. In this paper I discuss the development of strategies to facilitate the transition of students from passive to active learning; examine the role of technology-driven educational methodologies in promoting independent and group-centered learning skills; and use a case study to explore the instruction of Engineering Design and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and to examine how classroom management techniques have changed as a result of the growing use of technology.
Citation
Randeree, K. (2006), "Managing the Classroom in the 21st Century: Challenges in Engineering Instruction in the Arabian Gulf Region", Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 36-45. https://doi.org/10.18538/lthe.v3.n2.05
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006 Kasim Randeree
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 “Managing the Classroom in the 21st Century: Challenges in Engineering Instruction in the Arabian Gulf Region” has changed pagination. Previous pagination was pp. 1-10. The updated pagination for the article is now pp. 36-45. The Publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused.