Background
What is today Liwa College was formed in 2023 with the merging of Liwa College of Technology and Khawarizmi International College. The college has two campuses in Abu Dhabi, educating over 2,800 students and offering 25 bachelors and diploma programs across five faculties.
Liwa College seeks to continue as a cornerstone of higher education in the United Arab Emirates, to serve their local community, and to supply the country with skilled professionals. As stated on their website, their mission is to “foster the development of career-ready graduates by offering future-oriented supported by applied research, exceptional support services, advanced technology, extensive industry connections, and the expertise of highly qualified faculty and staff.”
Challenge
When Liwa identified that traditional learning methodologies weren’t being effective, they looked to Anthology for a solution. Professor Santosh Ray, acting vice president for Academic Affairs, summarized the search process by saying, “[We] wanted to empower faculty and students to communicate more interactively—with a central hub to store study materials, record sessions, and make them available. [We wanted to] easily assess and grade students, all this with accessibility in mind.”
Some of the challenges faced by the institution were a lack of strong student-faculty interactions during classes, maintaining academic integrity in preparing assignments and lecture content, and a lack of flexibility to access content anytime, anywhere. Liwa partnered with Anthology to leverage the power of Blackboard® Learn.
This strategic partnership allowed Liwa to address four main areas:
1. Providing equitable access to education
An important goal of Liwa is to provide flexibility for every type of student. This oftentimes includes balancing work, learning, and family responsibilities. Blackboard Learn Ultra’s strong mobile capabilities, as well as the possibility to watch classes on-demand, were important benefits Liwa locked in on when choosing an LMS experience which would allow students to learn at their own pace, on their own devices, and in timetables congruent with their lives.
2. Supporting multiple modes of delivery
While the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the necessity of hybrid learning modes, Liwa has actively encouraged this approach in order to meet learners where they’re at. Since adopting Blackboard Learn Ultra, Liwa has effectively used Anthology’s solution to deliver courses in online and hybrid modes, increasing student participation to 90%. By utilizing flexible modes of delivery, a higher number of student registrations resulted. The average number of courses registered by each student also increased to 12.
3. Enabling flexibility on behalf of educators
Educators at Liwa have been able to learn and adopt new educational methods using Blackboard Learn Ultra. By integrating tools such as Kahoot with Blackboard Learn Ultra, effective strategies, including gamification, have been utilized. Liwa even combined the power of their H5P tool with Blackboard Learn Ultra to prepare interactive PowerPoint slides.
4. Leveraging data in more effective ways
By using data points such as login details, text chats within Collaborate (a virtual classroom tool), responses from the forums, and more, Liwa has improved its engagement tracking. Based on the data now being collected, educators can personalize their interaction with learners. This has illuminated intervention opportunities, such as for students whose data demonstrates their struggle with coursework being invited to attend office hours for more personal attention. Blackboard Learn Ultra is providing rich data points that lead to successful actions.
Blackboard has more capability in terms of the number of features and number of users handled at a time…Also, [we] needed to integrate the learning management system with the student information system and Blackboard Learn [Ultra] provided what [we] needed.
Why Blackboard Learn Ultra?
When asked why Liwa transitioned from its previous provider to Blackboard Learn Ultra, Professor Ray explained, “Blackboard has more capability in terms of the number of features and number of users handled at a time…Also, [we] needed to integrate the learning management system with the student information system and Blackboard Learn [Ultra] provided what [we] needed.”
Results
Liwa has established a very direct metric through which they have evaluated the success of their transition to Blackboard Learn Ultra: student satisfaction. In fact, in the latest satisfaction survey, 76% of Liwa students responded as being satisfied or very satisfied with the institution’s new solution. Specific benefits Liwa educators and learners receive from Blackboard Learn Ultra include:
Pedagogy
Blackboard Learn Ultra allows faculty to use different types of assessments, such as essay, matching, multiple choice, and true/false questions. Liwa faculty highlighted how easy it is to assess and grade essay questions using Annotate for inline grading, as well as appreciating the ability to provide personalized feedback for each student.
Efficiency
Blackboard Learn Ultra provides the ability to create multiple sessions of courses (which, for an institution such as Liwa with multiple campuses, is tremendously beneficial). Faculty also have praised the time-saving features of SafeAssign when checking for plagiarism. Additional features, such as “lockdown” browsers, evaluation of student submissions, progress tracking, and even learner feedback all operate more efficiently for Liwa in Blackboard Learn Ultra.
Best-in-class technology
In addition to the efficiency of Blackboard Learn Ultra’s built-in features, Liwa faculty and students have found timesaving, intuitive benefits from our platform’s easy integration process. This has been especially evident for Liwa through the integration of Peoplesoft, and the institution plans to utilize additional integrations soon.
Liwa’s administrators, faculty, and students have each benefited from the rollout of Blackboard Learn Ultra in many unique ways, and the institution is excited to continue exploring the functionality and capability of the platform moving forward. Professor Ray sees the value of this partnership continuing to evolve over time and noted, “It is a great pleasure to work with the [Anthology] team who are always available to provide support.”
Ready to try Blackboard Learn? Learn more about Blackboard Learn or sign up for a free 30-day trial and experience it yourself:
