Arab Educational Information Network

Many challenges have been faced during Covid-19 pandemic in which higher education institutions adopted emergency online teaching; the most prominent of which was the lack of use of learning management systems like blackboard by some faculty members. As these systems have an important role in distance education, higher education institutions launched various initiatives in order to face this challenge. The current study evaluates the role of one of the initiatives sponsored by the center for excellence in learning and teaching at King Saud University in addressing this challenge. The assistant student lead "Saed" was evaluated by the faculty members who benefited from the initiative, where data was collected through an electronic survey in which 238 faculty members participated. The results of this study indicate that the initiative has helped greatly in enabling faculty members to use the learning management system, blackboard, during the pandemic, and that it has also helped greatly in increasing the faculty’s motivation towards using blackboard. A number of recommendations are included. (Published abstract)