All government school students will begin their studies starting Sunday through the distance-learning system.
The Ministry of Education and Higher Education said that students from the first to the third grade will use the 'MS Teams program', while students from grades four to 12 will use the Learning Management System 'LMS', pointing out that these systems provide the feature of interacting and communicating with the teacher to both the student and the parent through conversations (chatting).
In this context, the ministry has prepared educational content for these levels by photographing and producing videos for daily lessons and focuses on providing the student with the concepts and values of these lessons, which will be available on electronic links via the digital platforms provided by the ministry.
It emphasised the importance of the partnership between the parents and the school in this regard, and in the context of ensuring the safety of students, a number of useful advice on the practice of distance learning was provided to them.
The ministry also prepared illustrative files and videos detailing how to log in and log out on distance-learning platforms for students and their parents.
With regard to distance learning for people with disabilities, the ministry has provided educational materials that meet the needs of this group of students, according to the level and type of disability.
On the other hand, it directed the specialised schools to choose the best teachers for the specialised subjects in each school and instruct them to provide illustrated lessons for theoretical materials and practical workshops and raise them on the learning management system at the school website, and send text messages to parents notifying them to start broadcast the lessons.
Within the framework of its preparations to implement the distance-learning system in public schools, the education ministry is keen to educate parents, teachers and students on how to use the applications of the system, where the Public Relations and Communication at the ministry launched a slogan for this system entitled "Distance Learning Qatar Platform for the Future". It has also taken social media and YouTube channels as a means to include educational materials and to receive audience feedback.
In this regard, the administration created a new educational channel on YouTube entitled 'Qatar's distance learning' for general education students (from the first primary to the 12th grade), to ensure the readiness of students, their parents and teachers to use the distance-learning system, and learn how to use Microsoft software TEAMS for first to third grades, and the LMS learning management system program for students from grades four to 12.
These programs assist students to learn freely and remotely, and will also enable them to access content, to do homework online, and to chat instantly, thus reducing teachers efforts in the daily and weekly assessment process, and enabling the teacher on the other hand to share interactive lessons through the use of the whiteboard, as well using text, audio and video, it will also enable him to record video lessons and viewing lessons, so that students can have access to them at any time.
The channel contains about 1,700 lessons for different levels of study, the duration of each lesson ranges from10-15 minutes.
In this context, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education asked some teachers to photograph the video lessons, and send them to the ministry to upload them on the website and the official channel of the ministry or the distance learning channel on YouTube, so that all students can have access to the content of the lessons, especially since the curriculum has only a little left.
On the other hand, the hashtag "#Learning_An" will be activated on all social media platforms, Twitter and Instagram, through which students and teachers share their experiences in using the distance learning system, and to express their opinions and inquiries, as well as explanatory videos will be published via these platforms; it shows the mechanism of using the LMS programs TEAMS, login steps, and account creation.
It is worth noting that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education has taken many educational policies and procedures during the last period, to deal with the emergency conditions the country is going through in light of the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) globally, as it adopted the distance-learning system in all public and private schools, with a view to facilitating the educational process, enabling students to continue their education, raising their academic achievement, and ensuring that they achieve the goals of the study materials, encouraging them to recall their lessons and retrieving them in flexible ways that take into account their different circumstances, and it also provides an opportunity for their parents to monitor their children's academic achievement and the extent of their understanding of the training mentioned in those lessons, and also enables teachers to assess.