Ibn Sina e-learning unit

The Ibn Sina e-learning unit has been created in order to implement the university order within the detailed organizational structure of the Faculty of Medicine, and its link is with the Associate Dean for Scientific Affairs.

Unit objectives:

1. Spreading the culture of e-learning in the college.
2. Helping faculty members to produce and convert their courses into electronic courses.
3. Continuous coordination with continuing education units in holding courses and workshops for faculty members.

Unit tasks:

1. Managing, updating and maintaining the interactive website.
2. Training students to use the site.
3. Training and helping teachers to use educational platforms.
4. Follow-up on the completion of activities (performing electronic exams,
   opening platforms for dialogue and discussion between students and
   teachers, submitting research and reports, uploading lectures,
   conducting questionnaires).
5. Activating communication between students and teachers.
6. Holding periodic workshops to train teachers and using the site to provide guidance lessons and educational guides that teachers need (scientific and research websites, course work guide, supervisors’ arrangement mechanism and student distribution) and some important public lectures presented by the most qualified professors and some extra-curricular activities for students such as cultural magazines.
7. Attending seminars, workshops, panel discussions and conferences related to e-learning held at the Ibn Sina Center at the University of Baghdad.
8. Follow-up the activities of the ministerial team for e-learning affiliated to the Department of Research and Development in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and transfer developments to the college.
9. Uploading the unit’s activities on the college’s website.

Members of Ibn Sina E-Learning Unit:

• Assist. Lecturer Eelaf Ayyed Jabur
• Assist. Lecturer Shahad Mahgoob Nafl

INLE E-Learning Website

The computer server running Moodle has been successfully deployed and is now operational at the College of Medicine in Baghdad. It was officially launched on the World Wide Web on 10/01/2014 under the address inle.uobaghdad.edu.iq.

The e-learning website for the College of Medicine in Baghdad is named INLE (Iraqi Networked Learning Environment), inspired by the e-learning website of the University of Nottingham (NLE), acknowledging the college’s contribution through the British grant “Delphi” in taking the first steps to make online e-learning possible.

The College of Medicine started its e-learning project with the Research Methods unit for postgraduate studies as a pilot phase. This educational unit included interactive lectures, text-based lectures (PDFs), as well as lectures combining audio, written text, and images. We then expanded the experiment to include first-year medical students as a requirement for the success of the new Integrated System-Based Curriculum.

The e-learning system can be compared to a virtual college, where administrative and educational tasks and activities are carried out, as well as monitoring, evaluating the performance of both the teacher and the student. The educational content in the Moodle system varies to serve the student and the teacher with the least cost, effort, and highest quality of results. The website includes a detailed curriculum plan enhanced with behavioral and skill-based objectives for each teaching unit, as well as detailed educational objectives for each lecture. The following are the types of activities and applied resources:

• Lectures, which are presented in various formats, including pdf and PowerPoint, as well as interactive audio lectures.
• Discussion forums that enhance communication between the teacher and the student.
• Scientific research, where the website facilitates the process of collecting research from students and presenting it to professors for evaluation, as well as preparing and guiding students and providing them with the necessary sources and information to write research.
• Surveys and feedback, which are essential activities that teachers resort to in order to evaluate lectures and teaching units, as well as to evaluate teachers by students.
• Online exams remain the most commonly used and effective means, as each unit includes an exam that measures the student and teacher’s strengths and weaknesses in understanding the curriculum.
• Diverse sources of electronic scientific books, journals, websites, and videos.
• Workshops and other interactive activities.

The following is a general statistics about the website:

• The number of users reached 3073, and the number of participating teachers was 190, while the number of units was 420 units distributed as follows:
• The total number of teaching units since the website was launched until the end of the first semester of the academic year 2019/2020 was 405 units, including:
• 92 standard teaching units for the first stage (old and current).
• 86 standard teaching units for the second stage (old and current).
• 63 standard teaching units for the third stage (old and current).
• 60 standard teaching units for the fourth stage (old and current).
• 43 standard teaching units for the fifth stage (old and current).
• 24 current standard teaching units for the sixth stage.

• The Faculty of Medicine announces the conduct of the in-person electronic exam for fifth-year students on the global Moodle platform.
• The Faculty of Medicine organizes a training workshop on the flipped classroom.
• A meeting of the Curriculum Committee at the Faculty of Medicine discusses the outputs of the integrated system for graduates.
• The Faculty of Medicine participates in the activities of the training course on digital transformation in higher education.
• The Faculty of Medicine conducts the electronic experimental test for final stages of study.
• The Faculty of Medicine organizes a training workshop on Microsoft Office Word program.
• A reception ceremony for new students.
• The Faculty of Medicine participates in the activities of the first conference of the American University in Baghdad.
• The Faculty of Medicine organizes an online scientific lecture on communication skills and ethics in medical practice.
• The Faculty of Medicine hosts the 10th specialized workshop for developing the capabilities and abilities of the national assessors team for specialties.

No.	Course Type	Number
1	Number of virtual lectures for theoretical subjects	1187
2	Number of virtual lectures for practical aspects of theoretical subjects	1463
3	Number of in-person practical lectures for all specializations	1637
4	Total number of enrolled students	3081
5	Number of students enrolled in parallel education	571
6	Total number of instructors	209
7	Number of instructors currently involved in e-learning	180
8	Number of instructors trained to launch blended and e-learning	180