UoB Achieves an Advanced Position in the Blackboard Competition to Improve the Level of Access 

Organized By the Global Platform to Help Students Easily Access Scientific Content 

UoB Achieves an Advanced Position in the Blackboard Competition to Improve the Level of Access 

 The University of Bahrain (UoB) achieved an advanced rank in the annual competition organized by the Blackboard Company to encourage professors in various universities around the world to improve the level of access of their students to educational content on the global educational platform Blackboard through the use of the Ally feature. 

The University ranked 57 globally in its first participation in the competition, which is organized by the Company in the third week of May every year for all universities that use the Blackboard platform. 

The Director of the Excellence in Education and Leadership Skills Unit at the University, Dr. Diana Abdulkareem Al-Jahrami, stated that “This participation is the first for the University in the annual day organized by the Blackboard platform to raise awareness of the importance of facilitating students’ access to educational content, especially those with special needs,” pointing out that “the idea came as an initiative of the Excellence in Education and Leadership Skills Unit and the E-Learning Center at the University to go through this experience.” 

On the internal front, Dr. Al-Jahrami pointed to the victory of ten faculty members, five academic departments and one college in the competition, which measyres the rate of access before participation and after participation through the use of the Ally feature to improve access to electronic content. 

According to Dr. Al-Jahrami, the University came in 57th place out of 115 universities that participated in the event from different countries around the world. 

The initiative was supported by the President of the University, Prof. Riyad Yousif Hamzah, who stressed the importance of participating in such events to test the University’s performance and develop the expertise of faculty members. 

Regarding the measures taken by professors to improve students’ access to scientific content on the Blackboard platform, Dr. Al-Jahrami explained that “Among those procedures are explaining the features of the images, using different colors, enlarging the main and introductory headings, highlighting sub-headings, and other measures,” noting that “originally this competition was done for improving the access rate targeting students with special needs, but in light of the current situation it targets all students.” 

On her part, the Director of the E-Learning Center, Dr. Fai Abdullah Al Khalifa, confirmed that the ranking achieved by the University is an advanced one, given that it started using the Ally feature to improve access to electronic content recently, and noting that improving the level would enhance the importance of the content in the educational process, because all students will be able to access it and rely on it. 

Moreover, she stated that the University is keen to raise the levels of access, and therefore it is planning to organize courses for faculty members in this field in various colleges, stressing that the progress achieved by the University at this stage motivates it to move forward towards further improvement and development. 

Dr. Fai Al Khalifa further mentioned that “There is no doubt that every instructor has the desire to facilitate the access of his students to the electronic content that made available for them on the educational platform, and therefore we invite all faculty members to take advantage of the Ally feature.” 

Also, she explained that “This feature was used to target students with special needs to help them access content easily, but current conditions defined people with special needs in a different way, given the time we all spend on screens with restrictions related to movement, therefore ordinary learners became persons with needs as well.” noting that “This feature is now aimed at everyone through the improvements it provides, such as colors, fonts, audio support, and more.” 

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