Online Higher Education – A lifecycle from Students'

Perspective
Salman S. A. Butt
IT Strategist, IT Center
Umm Al-Qura University
Aziziyah, Makkah
Mobile +966568685555
ssbutt@uqu.edu.sa

ABSTRACT
A regular, traditional, higher education lifecycle from student's
prospective can include the following steps, which starts from the
last year of the high school period: (1) Major selection: either via
placing a search in the local market to define its future needs, or
by following an area of interest to gain more knowledge in the
field, (2) Exploring and defining available study options in the
authorized universities, (3) Aligning the selection with the
available option and getting the admission, (4) Being enrolled into
the education process until the study finishes and getting the
degree, and finally, an optional step of (5) Start taking benefits of
the degree held.
Most of the higher education decision makers and advancement
influencers did focus onto the enrolment of the student into the
study process and getting the knowledge and the degree by
implementing the e-learning methods and techniques which
included providing e-curriculums and taking the benefit of ICT in
the process of knowledge transferring.
Such as JUSUR e-learning system which is being provided by The
National Center for E-learning and Distance Learning in Saudi
Arabia [1]. While other e-education leaders supported those items
with some e-forums for their students open discussions and other
public issues, such as Arab Open University [2].
provide their visions and their part of help which will be useful
for students in their starting stage of higher education and for
graduated students too who gained particular degrees which can
be hired by some specific market leaders, will be discussed too.
A final part will discuss a mutual working area of both the
governmental academic authorization agencies and the
universities to provide students with the necessary information
required and/or need to be in their consideration while they are
exploring and defining available study options from the
universities.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.1.0 [General],
H.1.1 [Systems and Information Theory]: Value of information,
H.1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Human factors, Human
information processing,
H.3.4 [Systems and Software]: Information networks,
H.3.5 [Online Information Services]: Commercial services, Data
sharing, Web-based services,
H.5.3 [Group and Organization Interfaces]: Theory and
models, Web-based interaction,

The research will high light an idea of a complete virtual online J.1 [ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING]: Business,
high education environment, or an e-campus, which includes Education, Government,
everything usually available in any regular traditional university K.3.1 [Computer Uses in Education]: Collaborative learning,
but in an electronic form and able to be accessed online. The idea Distance learning,
will include virtual hallways, classrooms, libraries, café shops and
play grounds (or lobby places). It will also cover the supporting K.6.1 [Project and People Management]: Life cycle, Strategic
services required by those items to support their electronic information systems planning,
versions too, such as students' attendance system, lecture
recoding, book borrowing and returning system, etc. General Terms
Management, Performance, Design, Economics, Reliability,
The research will also cover other points mentioned in the Experimentation, Human Factors, Standardization, Theory, Legal
lifecycle above. An approach of providing all kind of help Aspects, Verification.
necessary for students in general, and especially for those who
targeting an online higher education. This will include a
discussion about methods to provide online help for students in Keywords
selecting their majors, or identifying their basic skills and/or E-Learning, Online Higher Education, High Education Student,
natures on which they need to focus and gain more knowledge. Awareness.

A unique approach of connecting the market leaders in each field

of possible interest of students in one virtual place, online, to
1. SOCIETIES, UNIVERSITIES, AND
HIGH EDUCATION
Higher education is provided by either standalone colleges or
university based colleges. Universities and/or colleges provides
two types of products in the society, a certificate, degree, and/or a
research [3]. The research usually comes to the direct benefit of
the society, or group of concerned people within it, more than
individuals, while certificates, degrees, come to the direct benefit
of individuals who then becomes beneficial to their societies [4].
Students, as society individuals concerned about involving into a
process of gaining a degree from a university providing it, involve
into the higher education process for either a targeted benefit from
gaining that degree (such as a job) or for the knowledge and self
advancement and self satisfaction as social creatures.
Those who targets benefits from their degrees they will gain after
graduation either look for a job at a private sector or at a public,
governmental, sector. For public sector they need to know the
demands which will be raised in the future, before they start their
studies, or at least a prediction study from the past experience and
the advancement the market facing. That prediction is actually
what makes them attracted to a particular subject than another.
For those who targets governmental sectors they need to make
sure that the degree they will gain after studying for that long time
will be approved and granted from their governmental authorities,
or simply will be accredited officially. Only the knowledge and
the professional practices in the field of degree is not enough for
them, as it is enough for the private sector to some level [5].
2. REGULAR HIGH EDUCATION
LIFECYCLE
There are three main parties involved into the regular higher
education lifecycle for a student, which includes: (1) Universities
and colleges as education providers, (2) Benefit exchanging
parties who takes students for jobs and/or other benefits and
provide them individual benefits for themselves, and (3)
Governmental Accreditation Authorities, such as ministry of
higher education in several Arab and Gulf countries and the
accreditation universities in UK [4].
A lifecycle can be summarized and simplified as follow [6]:
Figure 1: Regular High Education Lifecycle
Where the governmental accreditation authorities answer to the
call for accreditation received from a university or a college by
providing the curriculums and subjects related to the
specializations specific for subjects the college will be teaching
and providing certificates in. Besides that, these authorities also
provides accreditation standards and teaching methodologies they
are authorized in, such as the labs and how is the attendance
system works, etc.
Those accreditation authorities gain their base knowledge of
required subjects and/or skills which universities must teach or
provide to their students of a subject, or a degree curriculum, from
the benefit exchange parties. Those parties are the actual workers
on the area of the growth of the market and the future needs based
on it.
The universities and/or colleges takes the curriculum and the
accreditation requirements and standards from the accreditation
authorities and assure their commitment to them on one side,
while on the other side they provide the education to the students
based on their accreditation area.
Education providers must assure their adherences to the
accreditation authorities for their education system and must
assure to their students that their education is by the accreditation
and they will be able to take other benefits from their degrees
when they will be granted for that.
After the journey of taking the education and following the
university's consultancy and guidance toward graduation; students
who wants to take personal benefits of their degree can apply for
their related sections at any of the benefit exchanging parties
(either in a private or public sector). Then, the specific
organization to which a student is attached, or affiliated, must
exchange the benefit with that student.
3. ONLINE HIGH EDUCATION
LIFECYCLE
From student's point of view, to provide a genuine online higher
education, all necessary information required by a student from
the three parties mentioned above to fulfill all his/her needs at the
internet. To make the student live a virtual online student life; a
complete virtual reality based environment must be arranged on
the web representing the three parties related to the high
education, i.e. Governmental Accreditation Authorities, Education
Providers, Benefits Exchanging Parties.
Simply we can say that this lifecycle is about making an online
interfaces for all three parties mentioned above, which can be seen
in the following example:

Figure 2: A Sample of an Online High Education Lifecycle
3.1 GOVERNMENTAL ACCREDITATION
AUTHORITY
An online high education student must find all necessary
information may become required for him/her to carry on the
study using the online virtual environment. One can think of this
as an outstanding step to make such interface for students while
this party has no direct interaction between them and the student
in the regular lifecycle.
However, it's not an outstanding step, it is required based on the
nature of the relationship will be placed between the student and
the university he/she will study in using the online environment.
As in the regular lifecycle an official approval and/or accreditation
letter provided from these authorities to the university can be seen
by the students physically in front of them while they are
submitting their admission papers in a facility of a particular
university or college.
While in the online environment this feature if difficult to provide
and/or to be checked by the student, as their relationship may be
exclusive via the virtual interfaces available online. Instead of
students to become relied on the words of such universities or
colleges about the accreditation in a specific subject area, it
becomes necessary for those authorities to participate into this
lifecycle by providing all kind of necessary information may
become required from any kind of students.
These required information can include for example:
- List of authorized online education providers
- Criteria or points need to be focused on if an online
education will be gained from another party than those
authorized ones
- Communication service to provide live help for students
who want to ask about any issue related to the online
education, or need clarification about any matter
Providing all necessary information is a responsibility of these
authorities, but to run, operate and manage the interface is not
necessary by them, as they might be already being busy in their
regular business and work activities. A unique approach of
managing and controlling an online interface for them will be
provided later in this research.
3.2 EDUCATION PROVIDERS
From all three parties related to the high education lifecycle; the
education providers needs to pay the highest effort in providing an
online environment for the students. They will not only use the
information and communication technologies to enhance or
materialize their teaching ways and methods, they will be required
to provide every single part of their regular university campus in a
virtual, online, environment.
There are several parts of the regular university or college
campuses which are necessary for any organization to provide
such education, which are necessary to be provided in the virtual
environment, while other parts of such campuses which can be
useful in both the regular campuses and the virtual ones are
required too.
An admission office with all necessary staff, i.e. clerks and
admission advisors, students affairs office with necessary student
supporters and advisors, hallways, classrooms, meeting point
areas, general and public chatting areas, library, and other
optional social activity areas can be included into the necessary
parts of an online campus which must be available there as parts
of the e-campus of an online high education provider.
The supporting parts can include a document management service
to handle all documents either received from an online student or
a regular student, and general communication services for advices
in several subjects related to the students life, i.e. social advices,
professional advices, selective subjects advices, and others.
Class/Student attendance services, researches and homework
submission services, citation and referencing evaluation services,
e-library, e-books, and e-books readers services, also can be a part
of such supporting areas for both the regular and the virtual
campuses.
To differentiate the online education from distance and other
irregular learning; all above mentioned areas must be covered and
taken care of. Yet, the approach of controlling and managing the
virtual environment will be provided in coming sections of this
research.
3.3 BENEFTIS EXCHANGING PARTIES
Based on future plans these parties knows to where they are
heading and what will be their human resource requirements in
the near future. A careful research being placed and a nice plan
being prepared for the knowledge areas required by those parties,
and the results are passed to the accreditation authorities to take
the necessary action to provide enough human resources to fulfill
those needs on time. In the online environment, this information
must be exchanged over the Internet.
Graduate or certified students usually goes to the offices of the
human resource departments of those parties, either a private or a
public sector, unless there will be some central controlled bulk
hiring in an organization, to submit their papers including a
summary paper with some copies of their certificates and/or
degrees. In the online environment, this operation must be
handled using an online recruitment services.
The idea may become not a new one, as parts of this approach can
be seen here and there in the world nowadays, but not all the parts
of this idea are being implemented anywhere yet. Implementing
this ideas requires a higher approach from the top level decision
makers to build a strategy for a country or a region and then
influence development and advancement specialists to work on
the implementation part of it.

The whole approach must be seen as a single strategy for the

3.4 A PRACTICAL APPROACH region want to run a healthy and accurate online education, and
All parts of the high education lifecycle are busy in their usual
must cover all parts of it to make it easy for students to access it
daily work, which prevent them from spending more time and
and gain confidence in their study and future, as they are the base
effort to build or participate in the online education, which is the
of nations (Figure 3).
base of the approach presenting in this research.
Education providers needs to build a portal to provide access for
Accreditation authorities will participate into this portal by
online students to their profiles and other administrative sections.
providing a list of accredit online education providers and their
One of the administrative-academic activities can include in this
programs and degrees they do provide, their specialization and
portal is the enrollment into study subjects, as it shows the
strong points, the rules and regulations for such accreditation, and
schedule of each subject available and students can enroll
some other information which can be helpful and/or needed for
themselves for studying them.
students. Even if the participation of these authorities seems to be
very small, but it’s one of the most valuable information in this
One of the good examples of this portal can be seen in the
whole education system.
Liverpool's Online High Education Campus, which included
Grades book, Personal Information, Financial Information and
Those authorities can participate themselves in this portal or they
Payment methods and mechanisms, Enrolments and modules
simply can provide this information to one of the other parties of
calendar, Books list, and some other informatics sections such as
the lifecycle, i.e. a private company, or the universities
Students Handbook [9].
themselves. A small example of this approach, not totally as it
must be maintained and took care of, can be seen as the Higher
Education Academy [7], and Study in Sweden Portal [8].

Building an online parallel campus, or virtual environment,

requires the same effort as they are already spending for their
regular daily works, but in much more technical and professional
way.

Figure 3: The Approach of Online High Education Lifecycle


Figure 4: University of Liverpool's Online Portal
While other parts which are required from the education
providers, including the virtual campus with all its parts
mentioned earlier in this research, can have a hyperlink in this
portal and can be hosted into a separate complete section which
can be under control of a third party. University of Liverpool
(UoL) prepared a partnership with Laureate Online Education for
the same purpose, which were using a software called Embanet
First Class [10]. Then they did change it to Blackboard Academic
Suite [11], which they did customize to fulfill their student's
requirements.
Figure 5: Blackboard Academic Suite of UoL
For the virtual environment implementation, third parties can use
Web Forum applications, which can be a humble implementation
but can be so rich and helpful in establishing an initial approach
for an online campus for an education provider.
Other important parts of the gateway is the participation of the
benefit exchange parties which includes an online recruitment
service, future studies about the skills and knowledge's demands,
and some other personal development services.
This gateway must be prepared to be a "hub" for all education
providers and benefit exchange parties to participate into it and
pay an effort to maintain it and keep it up-to-date to let the
students take real benefit of it, and of the online high education.
Responsibility of running and managing this gateway can be on
the shoulders of a third party company specialist in this field, i.e.
Laureate Online Education, or a governmental authority who
becomes responsible for attaching all online high education
providers and benefit exchange parties from the market and all
governmental organizations to be part of it and to influence them
to participate in making it an informal and much more beneficial
gateway for students. Such a governmental entity can be The
National Center for E-learning and Distance Learning in Saudi
Arabia, yet they are not functioning as mentioned in this paper,
but they can and that will be a wonderful turn in their and Saudi
students' lives.
4. CONCLUSION
A theory and a systematic approach of a complete online high
education lifecycle for online education students which included
all parties involved into the high education process from the
accreditation parties going through the education providers and
ending up with those parties who exchange benefits with
graduated, or certified, students.
An approach of a central online gateway for a particular country
of region, where all those parties do participate and exchange data
and information which are in benefit or necessary for online
students, was discussed and overviewed.
For future work, this approach can be translated into a pure
technical codes and a pure software gateway which becomes an
information and data "hub" to connect all related parts of the
online high education into one electronic place, which will be this
lifecycle.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to my wife for supporting me at home where I did
write this paper and made my researches most of the time.
Also, thanks to Dr. Basem Al-Kazimi, Deputy Director of ITC of
Umm Al-Qura University, for providing me an opportunity of
writing this paper and introducing me to the conference.
6. REFERENCES
[1] National e-Learning Center KSA, n.d. JUSUR LMS,
available at:
http://www.elc.edu.sa/jusur/english/jusur_advanced.php.
[2] Arab Open University , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 2008.
Arab Open University Students Forums, accessible via:
http://www.arabou.org.sa/en/forum.php.
[3] WordNet of Princeton University Online, n.d. Glossary,
available at:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=university.
[4] Butler, N. 2006. "What are universities for?" a speech at the
Foundation for Science and Technology, available at:
http://www.foundation.org.uk/events/pdf/20061025_Butler.p
df.
[5] Barrett, M. n.d. Accredited vs. Nonaccredited Colleges,
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http://www.toeflaccess.com/articles/ETS/us/study/what_stud
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[6] The Higher Education Academy, n.d. Student Lifecycle,
available at:
 http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/institutions/wp/lifecyc
le.
[7] The Higher Education Academy, n.d. About Us, available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/aboutus.
[8] Study in Sweden, n.d. available at:
http://www.studyinsweden.se/.
[9] University of Liverpool, n.d. an informatics portal of online
higher education, in partnership with Laureate Online
Education, available at: http://my.ohecampus.com/.
[10] Embanet.com, n.d. First Class Orientation, available at:
http://www.embanet.com/fc/application/FC-
orientation_v8_T5.html.
[11] Blackboard.com, n.d. Teaching and Learning, available at:
http://www.blackboard.com/Teaching-
Learning/Overview.aspx.