"We worked very hard to make sure that students in each location felt equally engaged in the program," said Dakhli. "We built an online community which gave students access to the professors, their presentations and to each other."
"It was a wonderful experience and the students were very eager, but of course there were some small challenges at first," said Wysor. "In addition to dealings with varying degrees of English proficiency, it took some time to figure out the in-class logistics of the video conferencing. But in the end it ran incredibly smoothly, and I’d say that without a doubt the students in Alexandria and Cairo bonded and became classmates in every sense of the word."
Overall, Dakhli is very pleased with the results and has had encouraging feedback from the students. "Most of the comments we received had to do with the relevance of the coursework to the students day-to-day jobs. The students were also pleased that we had taken the time to learn about their market and said that it helped when the faculty used case studies from companies within Egypt."
In addition to the positive feedback from the students, Dakhli said that the project achieved all of its goals. It also built a strong relationship between Georgia State University, the Robinson College of Buinsess, AIT and NileSoft, which will be vital to the future sustainability of the program.
"We have outlined several items that going forward will ensure AIT’s ability to leverage the skills they’ve gained over the past two years to continue offering quality, market-relevant continuing education programs," said Dakhli.
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