Readiness For Shifting From A Traditional Higher Education Learning System To An E-Learning System: A Case Study From The Sultanate Of Oman

The Ministry of Higher Education in the Sultanate of Oman initiated recently a restructuring program for the General Directorate Colleges of Education aiming to replace the existing six colleges with more applied and highly IT assisted institutions. A particular emphasis is directed towards improving the learning methods by developing and implementing a unified Learning Management System (LMS), which will serve the new form of these colleges. Such system is particularly intended to improve the e-learning skills in the six Colleges of Education. Each college has a Learning Resource Center (LRC) that provides IT services for about 1500 students and 150 staff members. During the past few years, the LRC at Nizwa College of Education (NCoE) has exerted many efforts in upgrading such services to the benefit of the college community. The discussion in this paper will be based on Nizwa LRC as an example, reflecting uniformity among the six colleges of education. This paper analyzes the readiness of the current learning system for the gradual shifting to a more IT assisted teaching system. First, the paper describes the evolution of the Intranet and Internet services in the college. Second, the steps realized in expanding and upgrading IT are described. Third, an evaluation of the available services and users is presented. This is supported by the analysis of the experimental implementation of an open source LMS, the "Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment" (Moodle) to assess the effectiveness of Moodle as a learning facilitator. Finally, recommendations on how to improve the outsourcing of these services are given. Aspects of the services provided by the LRC will be discussed through different users’ perspectives

Confident-DEA: A Unified Approach For Efficiency Analysis With Cardinal, Bounded And Ordinal Data

This paper proposes an extension to the existing literature in DEA, the authors call Confident-DEA approach. The proposed new approach involves a bi-level convex optimization model, and hence NP-hard, to which a solution method is suggested. Confident-DEA constitutes a generalization of DEA for dealing with imprecise data and hence a potential method for forecasting efficiency. Imprecision in data is defined as two forms, one is bounded data and the second is cardinal data. Complementing the methodology proposed by Cooper et al (1999) which provides single valued efficiency measures, Confident-DEA provides a range of values for the efficiency measures, e.g. an efficiency confidence interval, reflecting the imprecision in data. For the case of bounded data, a theorem defining the bounds of the efficiency confidence interval is provided. For the general case of imprecise data, that is a mixture of ordinal and cardinal data, a Genetic-Algorithm-based meta-heuristic is used to determine the upper and lower bounds defining the efficiency confidence interval. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first work combining Genetic algorithms with DEA. In both cases of imprecision, a Monte-Carlo type simulation is used to determine the distribution of the efficiency measures, taking into account the distribution of the bounded imprecise data over their corresponding intervals. Most of previous DEA works dealing with imprecise data implicitly assumed a uniform distribution. Confident-DEA, on the other hand, allows for any type of distribution and hence expands the scope of the analysis. The bounded data used in the illustrative examples are assumed to have truncated normal distributions. However, the methodology suggested here allows for any other distribution for the data

Evaluation of a global blended learning MBA programme

This paper evaluates the design and implementation of a UK university’s global blended learning MBA programme which combines e-learning with face-to-face teaching. The primary aim of the research was to investigate the learning experience and perceptions of the students, and to use the findings to evaluate the effectiveness of the course design and delivery system. Action research was used, with longitudinal data collected over a threeyear period (2008–2010). Three survey rounds were conducted focussing on Oman, one of the UK University’s main overseas learning collaborating centres. The three rounds yielded 116 valid responses in total. The first survey showed a fairly high level of student satisfaction with the programme but also indicated areas that needed further improvement. The impacts of subsequent changes in the programme were investigated in the second and third surveys. Feedback from these helped develop further changes in the learning content and delivery approach of the programme. The study contributes to a better understanding of global blended learning initiatives, and offers insights to managers on improving course management, enriching learning content, enhancing teaching quality, and improving students’ satisfaction levels

The productivity of Omani banks: a data envelopment analysis approach

The aims of this research are to analyse the performances of Oman's banking sector and do a comparative analysis for its different units. The analysis is based on the assessment of the relative efficiency of the commercial banks operating in Oman. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to evaluate the relative efficiency of the commercial banks in Oman. Panel data for the period of 2000-2005 were used to conduct the analysis. The intermediation theory serves as the theoretical background. The DEA provides the Technical Efficiency (TE) score for each bank per year. The TE scores are then decomposed into Pure Technical Efficiency (PTE) and Scale Efficiency (SE). In line with previous similar studies, the results suggest that the banking system in Oman, though performing proportionally to the size of its units, shows signs of pure technical inefficiency. Furthermore, the relatively high average TE score (90.4%) indicates the oligopolistic nature of Oman's banking sector. The findings also indicate that the local commercial banks outperform their foreign counterparts, confirming the home-country advantage suggested in the corporate cross-border activity literature. Finally, large banks are found to out perform their medium and small counterparts.Gulf Cooperation Council; GCC; Oman; banking performance; bank efficiency; data envelopment analysis; DEA; performance evaluation; commercial banks; technical efficiency.

A taxonomy for the flexible job shop scheduling problem

This chapter aims at developing a taxonomic framework to classify the studies on the flexible job shop scheduling problem (FJSP). The FJSP is a generalization of the classical job shop scheduling problem (JSP), which is one of the oldest NP-hard problems. Although various solution methodologies have been developed to obtain good solutions in reasonable time for FSJPs with different objective functions and constraints, no study which systematically reviews the FJSP literature has been encountered. In the proposed taxonomy, the type of study, type of problem, objective, methodology, data characteristics, and benchmarking are the main categories. In order to verify the proposed taxonomy, a variety of papers from the literature are classified. Using this classification, several inferences are drawn and gaps in the FJSP literature are specified. With the proposed taxonomy, the aim is to develop a framework for a broad view of the FJSP literature and construct a basis for future studies