Obstacles Facing Female Students Using Blackboard in Curriculum Courses at the College of Education in King Saud University

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties encountered by female students at the College of Education at King Saud University while using Blackboard in courses. The study sample consisted of 52 female students enrolled in the course 334 CSI-Introduction to Learning and Teaching. The students specialize in Psychology, Kindergarten, and Special Education. All female students used Blackboard in some courses. The main results of this study reveal that 59.6% of female students indicate that the faculty are using less tools that support discussions in Blackboard. And 51.9% of female students have high levels of difficulty in getting training to use Blackboard—46.2% have high difficulty for technical support and 44.2% have high difficulty in performing electronic tests—the study also revealed that 46.2% of female students face high difficulty in communication between students on the Blackboard, and 57.7% indicate a lack of activation of the bulletin board in Blackboard. The female students answered the open question, and they suggested that the University should provide a special unit to support Blackboard users and provide continuous maintenance and workshops at the beginning of each semester to explain the contents of Blackboard, as well as activating the discussions more among the students, and interaction with the faculty. Therefore, it is recommended that faculty and Blackboard administrators should encourage students to communicate in Blackboard, providing enough training programs for students to master Blackboard implementation in university courses, and urge academic departments to encourage faculty to use Blackboard.

Keywords: Obstacles Using Blackboard (LMS), Female Students College of education, Saudi Arabia