Distance Education for Law Students in the Arab World: Trends and Issues

Abstract

Recognizing the existing realities in the world and expressing a positive attitude to distance learning, the authors of the works described in this review analyze the opportunities and benefits of distance education for law higher education in Arab countries. They mark the flexibility and convenience of distance learning, which allows geographically dispersed students and especially those who live in areas of military conflicts, continue their education, attend a course of lectures of a leading specialist in their professional field. Among the disadvantages of this form of education the authors drew attention to the lack of live communication between students and a lecturer, implementation of group projects, selectivity of students in relation to the asynchronous communication, low saturation of distance courses in terms of content and others. It is also about the barriers that arise during the development of this sphere of education: lack of strength of the infrastructure equipment, network connection speed, difficulty of preparation and development of educational programs for law students in their native language (Arabic) and others.

Motivation Behind the Preference of Distance Education of Higher Education Students

“…The main disadvantages of this educational form are: the deprivation of social needs; low readiness of individual teachers to teach at a distance format and create educational materials whose design meets the requirements of online communication; the inability to qualitatively teach practice-oriented competencies of medical workers, chemists and others (Lamanauskas & Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė, 2021). Furthermore, a number of studies indicate that during distance learning students develop laziness and unwillingness to work on their professional development, which negatively affects their knowledge and grades (Aldrou, 2021;Alomyan, 2021;Namli & Samioğlu, 2021), and all the support for the remote format stems from the desire to continue a relaxed life for pleasure.…”