Learning has come a long way from the conventional blackboard that marked the earlier decades to the new age Blackboard Collaborate which enables learners to work and learn in a collaborative online environment. Virtu...Learning has come a long way from the conventional blackboard that marked the earlier decades to the new age Blackboard Collaborate which enables learners to work and learn in a collaborative online environment. Virtual classrooms, especially with learners sharing in academic workload on portals such as Google Docs, have arrived as a natural development of the ICT （In Circuit Tester） wave. In addition to offering ample scope for peer interaction, Blackboard Collaborate gives learners the electronic environment they are most familiar with and keeps them updated with the latest educational tools. However, for it to succeed, the perception of the teachers is a factor that needs close scrutiny before this tool can be incorporated into the system. The aim of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of teachers at Qassim University, KSA （Kingdom of Saudi Arabia） towards the inclusion of Blackboard Collaborate into the teaching-learning environment, and its efficacy as a learning tool in the university＇s EFL （English as a Foreign Language） situation.展开更多
文摘Learning has come a long way from the conventional blackboard that marked the earlier decades to the new age Blackboard Collaborate which enables learners to work and learn in a collaborative online environment. Virtual classrooms, especially with learners sharing in academic workload on portals such as Google Docs, have arrived as a natural development of the ICT （In Circuit Tester） wave. In addition to offering ample scope for peer interaction, Blackboard Collaborate gives learners the electronic environment they are most familiar with and keeps them updated with the latest educational tools. However, for it to succeed, the perception of the teachers is a factor that needs close scrutiny before this tool can be incorporated into the system. The aim of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of teachers at Qassim University, KSA （Kingdom of Saudi Arabia） towards the inclusion of Blackboard Collaborate into the teaching-learning environment, and its efficacy as a learning tool in the university＇s EFL （English as a Foreign Language） situation.
