EGYPT

Government invites firms to apply to create MOOCs
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has launched a tender for local firms to help establish MOOCs – massive open online courses – under the Ministry of Higher Education, writes Mohamed Alaa El-Din for Daily News Egypt. It is the first effort to introduce MOOCs at such a scale in Egypt.The only other similar project is Nafham, an online project providing educational material through YouTube videos. The new government project aims to use MOOCs to provide wider access to higher education and to provide an open source e-learning platform that includes five curricula.
In addition, the project will train Supreme Council of Universities staff to produce digital educational content through the edX platform, which collaborated with Queen Rania of Jordan to develop an Arabic portal for MOOCs called Edraak. Increasing Arabic online education content is another of the project’s aims.
Full report on the Daily News Egypt site