On May 19th, 2014, Edraak, the Massive Online Open Courses (MAOCs) platform, was officially launched to provide world-class education to millions of Arab students and academic groups around the world.
The Edraak platform was developed with the support of the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development and it is also supported by the free online open course edX. Edraak will not only provide online courses for leading academics and academic institutions in Arabia, but also cooperate with edX. Edraak will also bring world-class academics such as Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, Queensland University, Tsinghua University, and University of California, Berkeley. The organization’s curriculum is integrated into the platform and the user is provided with all courses in the platform free of charge.
It is reported that the launch of the Edraak platform provides educational institutions with both an opportunity to make full use of online online education and to understand and analyze cutting-edge education while also demonstrating outstanding teachers and attracting new users of learning. The platform will not only have regular Arabic language courses, but will also provide short-term training courses for students and experts from various fields. On the other hand, Edraak satisfies enterprise online training and assesses the needs of current and potential employees, providing a good opportunity for companies to recruit talent in the region. In addition, Arab experts and scholars can also use the Edraak platform to publish English courses on the history and culture of the region and provide services to users worldwide who care about the development of the Arab region.
Samir Khalaf Abd-El-Aal, professor of gene and molecular biology at the Cairo National Research Center, said that the Edraak platform will eliminate language barriers and use online learning to improve the opportunities for higher education and reduce The digital divide and knowledge gap between the Arab world and developed countries in the world. However, online open courses require users to use the Internet, and the high price of the Internet due to network monopoly in the Arab region will inevitably bring inconvenience to low-income families and individual users who lack network resources.