التعليم عن بعد : أنماط واعدة للتعليم العالي بالدول العربية مع إشارة لتجربة جامعة الملك عبد العزيز

الملخص EN

This era in known as the era of knowledge and information, where its main characteristic is the advent of an incremental revolution in areas of science and technology, most important of which is information and communication technologies ICTs.

It is also characterized with the acceleration pace of development and change in all areas of activity.

This has reflected on the recognition of the importance of education and science especially tertiary education in all countries, developed and developing.

Accordingly, the world presently witness unprecedented demand for higher education that exceeds the capacity of existing universities.

Universities are important organizations due to their pioneering roles as they initiate development and change with keen responsibility for citizenship and responsiveness towards the needs of their societies in the context of positive and effective interaction with different impacting variables and challenges.

Especially, universities encounter the challenges of transformation to be consistent with the recent orientations of higher education.

Important of which is maintaing quality and adopting new modes of learning like distance learning and electronic learning as a way to respond to increasing demand for higher education.

This paper concentrates on presenting a brief illustration of some definitions and concepts of distance learning especially as a mode of learning that could be adopted in a more effective way to satisfy the increasing demands for higher education in the Arab countries.

The paper also explains the main aspects of (KAU) experience in distance learning.

The paper has concluded with proposed recommendations that could support the application of distance and electronic learning in the Arab universities.