Center of Knowledge and Electronic Services: Current Situation and Future Prospective

1. Center of Knowledge and Electronic Services: Current Situation and Future Prospective Ashraf S. Hussein Director, Center of Knowlege and Electronic Services Supreme Council of Universities, Ministry of Higher Education, Egypt. ashussein@heic.eg

2. Agenda • Higher Education Organizations • Centre of Knowledge and Electronic Services • What is the Higher Education Network? • Higher Education Network Vision and Mission • Egyptian Universities Network • e-Learning Centres • Universities Libraries Consortium • Management Information Systems • ICT Training • The Main Lineaments of the Future Prospect

3. Higher Education Government Organizations • 19 Universities • 8 Technical Colleges • 1,500000 Students • 42,000 Staff Member • During the period from 2005 to 2008, the Ministry of Higher Education has funded the Higher Education Enhancement project (HEEP) which consists of six major projects including Information and Communication technology project (ICTP), during this period ICTP has funded a number of projects within the Supreme Council of Universities and the Universities to mainly enhance the Higher Education Network

4. Centre of Knowledge and Electronic Services 2009 Execution and dissemination The main objectives of enhancing the Higher Education Network may be grouped into four major directions, namely: 2008 Strategic Plans , Regulation and Consultation 2005 Qualityof learning through providing access to new (non traditional) resources and improved teaching approaches, Quality of research through increased access to different national and international knowledge and computational resources, ICT led Management Information Systems, and Collaboration opportunities between universities. Funding projects and monitoring performance 2003 Higher education components UICs ICT Framework for Education and Research HEIC e-Government Strategy ICTP National ICT Strategy HEEP Connecting Communities Strategy

5. What is Higher Education Network • IT infrastructure supporting educational and research processes across higher education organizations. • Data centres in premier universities in addition to EUN. • Access to a wide variety of national and international knowledge channels and computational resources. • e-Learning and Distance-Learning resources to be integrated within higher education curriculums. • Continuous guided e-training on different IT components. • Streamlined organizational processes through intelligent Management Information Systems. • Single knowledge and services gate via higher education portal. • Wide variety of computational resources and electronic services

6. Centre of Knowledge and Electronic Services Vision “Strengthening higher education and research processes through variety of reliable electronic services, knowledge channels and computational resources”. Mission “Providing wide variety of reliable and integrated electronic services, knowledge channels, computational resources and automation systems to strengthen higher education organizations in addition to collaboration and communication with the relevant local, regional and international parties”.

7. Ministry of Higher Education Supreme Council of Universities

8. The Major Goals of CKES • Integration and coordination between: • different units of CKES • CKES units and the corresponding units in the universities. • Strategic plans for the different units of CKES • KPIs for the CKES units and the provided services • Information manipulation policies • Long (and short) term executive plans to accomplish the strategic objectives. • Provide technical support to the universities ICs. • Provide access to electronic information resources (periodicals, ebooks, dissertations, etc.) to HE organizations. • Encourage HE organizations to produce Arabic e-content and publish it regionally and internationally. • Establish a national strategy to utilize e-learning and distant-learning as (a) primary component(s) in HE teaching processes. • Provide capacity building to use IT systems to streamline administrative workflows within the HE organizations. • Insure the complete integration between the universities MIS and SCU MIS/DSS.

9. Centre of Knowledge and Electronic Services • National e-Learning Centre and 22 University production Centres • Enhance the higher education quality through nationwide strategy for e-learning development and utilization. • e-Learning infrastructure to defined, high quality specifications which include but not limited to 50 instructional designers, 75 graphic designers, 60 content developers, 20 training coordinators, 15 studio, 650 PCs, etc. • Produce e-content in a competitive basis. • Information, training and support for staff and students in the use of e-learning tools and facilities. • Range of automatic course generation tools. • Adopt international standards for courseware development in Egypt.