Technology Integration in Higher Education

Taking place on Wednesday 26th of May, 10:15 GST / UAE, 09:15 AST / Saudi Arabia, as part of the Victorian EdTech Summit, this session will feature leaders in education from schools in the GCC region who will give their views on how technology has been integrated in higher education institutes. In this era of hybrid and distance learning, the impact of using technology on the learning process in higher education is far more important than at any time before. Join in to listen to a panel of extraordinary speakers from different institutions providing different perspectives into this topic.

Chairperson: Faisal Ali Al Balushi – Chairman of the Omani Society for Education Technology 
Faisal Al Balushi is a Chairman of an EdTech nonprofit organization and he believes in harnessing the power of technology to make positive change and transform people’s lives. His vision is to inspire educational leaders, policymakers, organizations and individuals to efficiently use, utilize and integrate technology to improve the quality of education and so improve quality of life for all.
As an EdTech advocate, Faisal studies the effect of new emerging technologies on education in particular and society in general.

With 17 years of expertise in education technology, he has worked with Ministries, private organizations, community leaders and international partners to facilitate the digital transformation in teaching and learning, encourage innovation in classroom and promote equity and equality in education.

Faisal leads a cross-functional team to support the educational community in Oman including educational institutions, teachers, students and parents. He works with his team to introduce and manage national wide projects and initiatives to attain Oman’s 2040 vision and UN’s sustainable development Goal 4 (Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all).

To list some of the endeavors, Faisal and his team successfully provided online training opportunities for over 27,000 learners on future digital skills. They also helped schools and universities to effectively deploy online learning platforms, build open educational content repository and apply AI based technologies to protect school students from cybercrimes.

To overcome the shortage of adequate Arabic training content in technology field, Faisal led a project with his team to launch one of the largest Arabic online training platforms in Middle East (www.nadrus.com).

Apart from working in the education marketplace, Faisal is presently cooperating with leading international technology businesses to scale technology literacy to untapped markets across the Middle East.

In his spare time, Faisal loves to invest in young talents, exceptional teachers, emerging EdTech leaders and startups by providing one-to-one mentoring and coaching.

Dr. Hussein Elmehdi - Dean Academic Support Services at the University of Sharjah, UAE 
Dr. Hussein M Elmehdi is the Dean of Academic Support Services and the Acting Director of the Information Technology Center at the University of Sharjah. He is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Physics at the Department of Applied Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Elmehdi obtained his PhD in 2001 from the University of Manitoba, Canada in Biomedical Physics. In addition to his administrative roles at the University of Sharah, Dr. Elmehdi is very active in several research areas covering health & environmental physics, biomedical applications of ultrasound, environmental acoustics, and physics education. Dr. Elmehdi has over 50-refereed publications in high impact factor journals, well-known international conferences and book chapters as well as two registered patents. Dr. Elmehdi is leading several research projects and training programs in utilizing technological advances in LMS in all aspects of teaching and learning including instructional delivery, assessment and evaluation. Recently, Dr. Elemhdi is heading several committees at the University of Sharjah to ensure readiness of the University to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, which included readiness for distance learning as well as remote work. In addition, Dr. Elemhdi oversaw the implementation of online exams and supporting e-proctoring systems. For his achievements, Dr. Elemhdi has received numerous awards and recognitions.