The Arab Grid for Learning: A Model for System-Wide Resource Sharing and Services

Abstract

Throughout the world significant investments have and are being made in the design, development and deployment of digital learning content, learning management systems, content repositories and brokerage systems to facilitate the exchange of metadata and associated content to educational software systems. The experience in Europe and the US is that with all these projects financed, designed, implemented and maintained independently, the impact of these initiatives has been reduced and return on investment sub-optimal. Sustainability suffers and content is hard to find. With hindsight, the Arab world should be able to overcome these issues by creating a system-wide infrastructure to enable the discovery and identification of learning resources across different projects and technical systems in the Arab world and beyond in a uniform way. This paper provides an overview of the Arab Grid for Learning, an initiative lead by Obeikan Research and Development in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, Arizona State University and Dublin City University to provide a network of national portals with a common learning platform, online content service, and social networking system for all educators and learners across the Arab World.

Keywords: digital content, brokerage systems, learning management systems, global education, metadata, interoperability

JEL Classification: I20