A Information to Prime Platforms for On-line Programs
As universities and colleges shut their doorways in most nations because the Covid-19 pandemic unfold, on-line studying platforms rushed to extend their providing of coaching programs at totally different ranges for college students, teachers, well being employees and artistic arts professionals.
Al-Fanar Media has created a quick information to probably the most distinguished worldwide and Arab instructional platforms that we imagine might be of most curiosity to younger adults and school college students, and that provide free or inexpensive instructional content material.
Some provide programs that result in university-approved certificates, whereas others provide skilled certificates. Many provide programs for private enrichment, as properly.
We made positive to incorporate a lot of platforms that provide programs in Arabic.
Later, we plan so as to add a function that enables college students to price every studying platform and share their expertise in its on-line lecture rooms in order that different potential college students can decide how they will profit from the platform’s programs.
You can even verify our earlier particular article providing a collection of programs coping with facets of Covid-19 that some platforms put on-line for healthcare suppliers and different learners quickly after the pandemic hit.
We welcome our readers’ suggestions on their expertise utilizing this useful resource. Please go away us a remark within the Feedback part under or write to us at: [email protected].
The necessity for a platform that bridges the hole between theoretical and sensible facets of enterprise administration was the impetus behind the institution of this on-line enterprise faculty, based mostly in Cairo.
The platform’s founders needed to simplify spreading information about enterprise to the Arab public by means of what they are saying is the primary on-line academy specialising in educating enterprise administration in Arabic.
The platform supplies numerous programs in fields equivalent to entrepreneurship, advertising and marketing, gross sales, and accounting, in addition to customer support, info know-how, mushy abilities, and actual property advertising and marketing. It additionally provides programs in high quality administration, economics, legislation, and conversational English.
E3mel Enterprise Academy was began in 2013 as a free Fb web page. In 2016, it become a web based enterprise administration academy that gives paid programs.
Along with abilities coaching and growth programs, the academy provides programmes that result in diplomas, skilled grasp’s levels {and professional} doctorates within the varied branches of enterprise administration.
E3mel Enterprise Academy additionally supplies certificates which are accredited in a number of nations, together with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to college students who full its programs and programmes. Its credentials are additionally acknowledged by the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise College (EBU), which is licensed in the US.
Nafham (Arabic for “we perceive”) focuses on serving to pupils in grades Okay–12 in a number of Arab nations by offering simplified classes on the curricula in every grade.
The platform’s 23,000 video classes cowl the curricula in Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates by means of free, illustrated classes between 5 and 20 minutes lengthy. To date, about a million Arab college students have benefited from its movies, the platform says.
Moreover movies associated to highschool curricula, Nafham additionally provides a lot of common instructional programs appropriate for all learners on matters just like the fundamentals of grammar and morphology, arithmetic, and scientific analysis.
“Ask and Reply” is one Nafham service that lets college students ask for questions in varied topics and listen to solutions in a means which promotes interactive studying.
Yanfaa’s founders say it’s the “quickest rising instructional platform within the Arab world.”
The platform depends on a single subscription for all its content material. When you subscribe, you can begin any of the assorted programs on provide. These embrace programs in drawing and design, filmmaking, content material writing, info know-how, animation, human assets, and languages.
Nadrus.com is a part of the nonprofit Omani Society for Schooling Know-how, which acquired the Dubai-based platform in 2019.
The platform’s programs are partly free and partly paid. There are programs on laptop upkeep, community safety, graphics, advertising and marketing, e-commerce, programming, stitching, music, pictures, self-development, and languages.
Nadrus.com goals to bridge the hole between formal schooling and the abilities the labour market desires. Information reviews on the time of the acquisition mentioned Nadrus.com served over 200,000 Arabic audio system.
The self-learning platform Almentor is the world’s “greatest Arabic library of video-based programs,” its creators say.
Established in 2016, Almentor seeks to develop and supply customers with mushy abilities {and professional} abilities to assist them develop their capabilities.
The platform provides paid programs and brief movies developed by consultants in fields like advertising and marketing, motivation, human assets, enterprise administration, sports activities, entrepreneurship, company communications, and digital media.
In an interview on the platform’s web site, Ihab Fikry, founding father of Almentor, mentioned that the platform has over 4 million learners and has succeeded in assembly their want for steady on-line studying and abilities growth. Almentor believes studying is a “lifelong journey,” he mentioned.
Fikry mentioned the platform was current in additional than 10 nations in North Africa and the Center East and needed to broaden into different areas to grow to be “the bridge that connects the Center East and the remainder of the world.”
Kaya is a free world schooling platform for folks working within the humanitarian sector. It supplies on-line and stay studying on matters from the fundamentals of humanitarian work to technical areas and programming, in addition to instruments for creating mushy {and professional} abilities. The total course catalogue might be discovered right here, and customers can study extra concerning the platform right here.
Kaya was established by the Humanitarian Management Academy, a nonprofit organisation that’s a part of Save the Kids, acharity registered in the UK. Its mission is to coach help employees to be prepared to answer crises of their nations.
With the unfold of the novel coronavirus, Kaya has printed a lot of programs about Covid-19, together with a “Covid-19 Studying Pathway” that’s incessantly up to date with new trainings to assist humanitarian employees reply to the general public well being emergency.
Kaya is out there in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. Its programs final from a number of hours to a couple weeks. Some provide direct certifications from Kaya.
You should use Kaya by way of computer systems and cellular gadgets. The cellular utility permits customers to obtain programs to allow them to proceed studying offline, after which add their progress to their profile as soon as they’re again on-line.
Edraak is a non-profit instructional platform based mostly in Jordan that gives free on-line programs in Arabic. It was launched in 2014 by the Queen Rania Basis for Schooling and Growth and has labored with edX, an affiliate of the Massachusetts Institute at Harvard College, which strives to make high-quality schooling in Arabic accessible to anybody with an web connection.
Edraak provides programs on two platforms: persevering with schooling for adults, and Okay-12 schooling, with assets for academics, mother and father, and school-age learners. Programs on the Okay-12 platform are aligned with curricula within the Center East and North African area.
Rwaq, the Arab Open Studying Platform, is predicated in Saudi Arabia. It provides free, high-quality educational materials in Arabic in quite a lot of disciplines offered by distinguished teachers from all around the Arab world.
The platform is geared in direction of all varieties of learners, together with school college students trying to enhance their information of their discipline, staff wanting to discover a brand new topic, and individuals who merely take pleasure in studying on their very own.
The corporate believes within the worth of open on-line programs equivalent to these offered by Coursera and edX, and it desires to make Rwaq a mannequin for this strategy within the Arab world.
Whereas it acknowledges and helps Arab initiatives that search to translate translate Coursera’s content material into Arabic, it goals to do extra. “We imagine that the Arab world deserves to have its personal instructional platform, through which Arab learners meet with scientific and sensible consultants who communicate on to them with out the necessity for translation,” it says.
Rwaq hopes to fill a spot in native experience. Fouad Al-Farhan, a co-founder of Rwaq, advised Wamda Entrepreneurs in 2013. “Expertise needed for entrepreneurship, like digital advertising and marketing, for instance, are fully totally different right here. … We want content material that pertains to this market.”
Rwaq provides “unofficial” certificates upon completion of some programs. official certificates can solely be granted by an accredited educational physique in Saudi Arabia, it explains. “We hope that we are going to quickly have the ability to discover the suitable authorized standing in order that we are able to concern this sort of certificates.”
The platform invitations college professors and others with experience in a sure topic to assist them create programs. It additionally permits universities, scientific societies, and different instructional organisations to grow to be educational companions by creating their very own pages on the platform.
Rwaq was established as a three way partnership between Fouad Al-Farhan, who was a distinguished blogger and human rights advocate in Saudi Arabia, and his pal, the pc engineer Sami Al-Hussayen.
Whereas Al-Farhan stopped running a blog after establishing Rwaq, he was amongst a gaggle of intellectuals and journalists who have been arrested on unspecified fees in November 2019 in a Saudi crackdown on folks accused of criticising the federal government. He was launched 10 days after his arrest. Earlier in his profession as a blogger, he was jailed for 4 months in 2008 after being warned about his assist for an activist group.
FutureLearn was based in 2012 by the Open College to ship on-line programs in collaboration with different universities in the UK. Just like Coursera, the platform now provides on-line programs, programmes, and certificates from greater than 80 accomplice establishments around the globe.
The programs are in additional than a dozen topic areas, together with enterprise and administration; inventive arts and media; healthcare and drugs; historical past; info know-how and laptop science; language; legislation; literature; psychology and psychological well being; science, engineering and arithmetic; research abilities, and educating.
Whereas the platform is a for-profit enterprise, a lot of its choices are free for college students who take a course with out looking for a certificates. To earn a certificates of completion, college students can both pay for a single course or pay a month-to-month payment to proceed studying.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, FutureLearn has added a lot of programs coping with associated public well being and psychological well being points, in addition to programs for educators.
One free course, “How one can Train On-line: Transferring On-line Publish-Pandemic,” was designed by Future Study consultants to assist academics transition their programs from face-to-face to on-line.
One other course, “Managing Covid-19 in Major Care,” was developed by St George’s, College of London. Entry to course supplies is free to auditors; learners who need a certificates pays a course payment or subscribe.
edX is a nonprofit organisation based by the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how and Harvard College in 2012. It provides over 3,600 on-line programs in dozens of topics given by greater than 160 accomplice universities and corporations. College students can view most edX programs free by registering, but when they need to entry graded assignments and obtain a verified course completion certificates, they need to pay a payment.
Along with particular person programs, a few of edX’s accomplice universities provide full on-line bachelor’s and grasp’s levels on the platform, in addition to certificates and on-line modules that kind components of diploma programs, for which college students can earn educational credit score. The platform additionally provides skilled abilities programs that award certificates. All of those choices have tuition prices.
Like Coursera and FutureLearn, edX expanded free entry to its programmes in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Its Distant Entry Program gave college students at collaborating universities free entry to programs and programmes from all edX companions, not simply their very own universities.
Coursera has been some of the common on-line studying platforms for practically a decade, providing hundreds of on-line programs that anybody can take free. Via its partnerships with greater than 275 main universities and corporations, it additionally provides practically 40 on-line levels -and dozens of programmes resulting in skilled certificates or credentials that may be utilized towards a college diploma.
The corporate additionally provides a subscription-based college platform known as Coursera for Campus that enables member establishments to combine Coursera programs into their diploma programmes.
In March 2020, on the top of the Covid-19 campus closures, Coursera introduced that it was quickly making Coursera for Campus free for greater schooling establishments that had been affected by the pandemic. The provide was legitimate worldwide aside from nations the place Coursera is prohibited from doing enterprise underneath U.S. export controls. Within the Arab world, these nations embrace Syria.
Coursera was based in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, who have been then professors at Stanford College.
Skillshare is a web based studying group that gives hundreds of brief video programs for folks looking for to realize particular new abilities or hone their abilities in inventive fields equivalent to design, writing, illustration, filmmaking, and pictures. It additionally provides courses in associated enterprise and know-how topics, equivalent to advertising and marketing and net growth.
Skillshare, a New York-based firm, shouldn’t be affiliated with any schools and doesn’t provide any educational credit or certificates for course completion. Most of its courses concentrate on educating one particular sensible talent somewhat than a broad set of abilities. Courses final 20 to 60 minutes on common, the corporate says, and are damaged down into brief classes of two to eight minutes that college students can watch at their very own tempo. All Skillshare courses embrace a undertaking that offers college students a possibility to follow what they’ve realized and work together with others within the class.
Class creators embrace each professionals and amateurs, however potential college students must be conscious that there is no such thing as a utility or approval course of for academics. Anybody who thinks they’ve experience in a sure topic can create a course on Skillshare. The corporate describes its academics as “day-to-day founders, entrepreneurs, and professionals who’re obsessed with what they do.”
Skillshare provides some free video classes and likewise has month-to-month and annual subscription plans. The web site doesn’t publish details about prices however asks college students to create an account to see present membership pricing of their area. Enterprise Insider reported in June 2022 that after an preliminary free trial, a month-to-month membership value $32 per thirty days and an annual, premium membership value $168 (roughly $14 per thirty days). There are additionally crew plans for corporations that need to enroll teams of employees to make use of the platform.
The non-profit Khan Academy was launched in 2008 with a sequence of instructional movies that Salman Khan, then a junior hedge fund analyst, posted on YouTube to assist his younger cousins who have been combating arithmetic.
At this time, the favored e-learning web site provides 10,000 classes to college students in all grades and most main areas, together with arithmetic, science, laptop programming, grammar, historical past, artwork historical past and economics.
Greater than 18 million folks around the globe use the web site each month finding out in additional than 40 languages, together with Arabic. The web site additionally comprises instructional content material to assist academics, coaches, and oldsters, and provides free preparation classes for the SAT and practically a dozen different assessments for faculty and college admissions.
Hsoub Academy is the academic division of Hsoub Firm, which supplies Web providers to Arabic-speaking customers. The corporate was based in 2001 and operates the 2 largest impartial Arabic platforms and the most important promoting community within the Center East and North Africa.
Hsoub Academy provides complete on-line coaching programs in matters like programming, net design, and cellular purposes. College students who enroll in a course begin from scratch and go step-by-step to realize proficiency in a specific talent.
College students can get a certificates after all completion. The corporate guarantees that college students who efficiently full the course will have the ability to get a refund if they don’t discover a job or self-employment inside six months.
Udemy is a web based studying platform the place anybody can construct a course. The corporate describes itself as a market that brings collectively people who find themselves skilled in a topic and those that need to find out about it.
Courses on Udemy are primarily sensible and career-focused somewhat than educational, though college students can discover programs that broaden their information of an instructional topic. The corporate says it at present provides 204,000 video programs, with new additions printed every month.
Since Udemy is a digital classroom that enables anybody to show, it’s not at all times attainable for its programs to compete in high quality with these provided by universities on platforms like edX and Coursera. Nevertheless, many Udemy course creators truly are professors, graduate college students, or professionals who’re consultants of their discipline.
Udemy employed professors to create free programs in a bit its web site known as the College Venture, however the web page shouldn’t be as lively because it was once and at present solely has seven programs, most of which supply two to 6 hours of instruction by means of a sequence of brief video lectures.
Paid programs could also be significantly longer. One economics course, for instance, provides 84 hours of on-demand video lectures. Costs fluctuate from course to course, however many seem like within the vary of $15 to $30.
Most programs are taught in English. Some are additionally out there in different languages, together with Arabic, however it may be troublesome to search out them.
The corporate was based by Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar in January 2010 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Like Coursera, Udemy is blocked from doing enterprise in Syria due to U.S. export controls.
Tabshoura Plus is a part of the Tabshoura Venture, an initiative launched by Lebanese Different Studying (LAL), a nongovernment organisation that helps everybody’s proper to schooling by means of digital applied sciences.
The undertaking additionally supplies kindergarten and center faculty platforms that assist the Lebanese faculty curricula. Tabshoura Plus supplies coaching programs in artwork, atmosphere, civic consciousness, studying difficulties, and different topics.
The programs are designed in a easy, interactive means, making the platform particularly appropriate for youngsters and youngsters. Nevertheless, the matters and high quality of coursework could possibly be of curiosity to any age group, significantly those that work with kids in schooling, and social and humanitarian fields.
Amongst this platform’s appreciated options is that customers, who’ve restricted or no entry to the Web, can entry the platform offline by means of “Tabshoura in a Field,” which makes use of Raspberry Pi know-how to permit the creation of a neighborhood wi-fi community which might join as much as 30 gadgets.
LinkedIn Studying, previously often called Lynda.com, provides programs on programmes associated to careers, know-how, inventive and technical abilities, and self-development abilities somewhat than educational topics.
The programs are of top of the range and are offered by corporations and skilled trainers, however there have been criticisms that a lot of the programs are for newbies, and customers have to be premium LinkedIn subscribers.
Hala Mkhallalati contributed analysis for this text.
