Professor Imed Romdhani working with Scot Aid to acquire licences for different learning platforms
An Edinburgh Napier academic is spearheading an international initiative to provide free online courses to students in Gaza.
Professor Imed Romdhani has linked-up with Scottish charity Scot Aid, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and online learning platform edX and is aiming to initially provide 5,000 free licences to students in Gaza.
The initiative – which aims to support around 20,000 students in total – will give students access to unlimited courses from three online learning platforms; edX, Coursera and DataCamp.
It is estimated that nearly 80,000 students have lost their academic year as a result of the ongoing conflict in Palestine. The three online learning platforms chosen will provide verified and credit eligible courses, professional certificates, Micro Bachelors and Micro Masters in a range of disciplines.
A fundraising campaign – which has raised nearly £20,000 so far to purchase licences for the students – has also been launched for specific access to the edX platform. edX has been created by leading American institutions Harvard and MIT to make the world’s best education available to everyone.
Professor Imed Romdhani, Associate Professor within Edinburgh Napier’s School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment, said: “Following the ongoing war in Gaza since last October, all universities in Gaza have been destroyed and students have been deprived of their right to continue studying like their peers around the world.
“Ninety dollars are at least needed to provide an unlimited annual membership licence to each learner (student or academic member of staff), without including the cost of the internet connection, the IT equipment and other safety measures. There are more than 80,000 students who need our help to complete the lost academic year and gain verified and credit eligible courses to progress in their study and to help some of them to apply for studentships abroad or gain scientific and academic knowledge that is no longer available in Gaza.
“edX has kindly accepted to provide a mechanism to revoke access and rotate a single licence among a couple of learners during the year. We are committed to providing at least three months access for each enrolled student from Gaza.
“We are so grateful to anyone who has donated so far. If you can give anything to the initiative, your donation can make a massive difference in supporting these students to fulfil their academic dreams.”
More information on the fundraising campaign can be found here.