Creating active learning solutions in higher education to ensure a high quality education for diverse learners seems to many educators a daunting effort. Universities throughout the world and in the Middle East are experiencing increasing populations of learners who are global thinkers, diverse and complex in their learning needs due to language, gender, ethnic, cultural, and other physical and learning disabilities or differences. Creative solutions to bring desired learning outcomes will require integrating information and communication technologies into learning and teaching in ways that draw connections between instruction, technology, diversity, content and assessment. Developing an understanding about the context for driving change in higher education will require time-out from educators and administrators shaming and blaming each other about educational inequities and problems that exist to transforming into learning organisations that work together to find long-term, affordable and sustainable solutions. One of the most pervasive arguments in research is that active teaching environments, learning technologies, and weblearning 2.0 communications convergence can help educators, and their students achieve higher levels of excellence. Such communication tools can also be a conduit to support global relationships through digital dialogue that can open opportunities for faculty and students to understand how to use differences to enrich learning and teaching.

The first step in bringing about change in education to improve the performance of diverse learners involves creating an awareness of the problem and potential solutions.Today,we must ask important questions. I attempt to address five such questions:

1. Who are the new global diverse learners?
2. What makes these learners different or diverse in their learning needs?
3. What factors can ensure learning diversity needs be met in new learning environments?
4. What are the characteristics of differentiated learning and teaching?
5. What is the solution to global differentiated learning in higher education to create active and engage learning in diverse students environments?
6. What are the instructional needs in educational settings to empower learning and build literacy in a digital age?

Who are the new global diverse learners?

Diversity will continue to grow in educational institutions in the Middle East. Global diverse learner groups may emerge from a combination of differences in at least nine areas:

1. Ethnic
2. Racial
3. Cultural
4. Gender
5. Disabilities
6. Special needs (e.g. English Language)
7. Economically disadvantaged (the poor)
8. Educationally disadvantaged (cannot read)
9. Learning Disabilities

What makes these learners different or diverse in their learning needs?

Far too often learning differences or disabilities get interpreted as the “inability to learn”.Diverse learners are those who need to have learning conditions suitable to them. The problem is often not the learner but the environmental conditions that do not support their unique needs. The United Nations has declared 2003-2012, The Literacy Decade due to International Adult Literacy Statistics.

More than 861 million adults with diverse learning needs do not currently have access to literacy in their own language or in English. Many are diverse students with language barriers, enrolled in institutions of higher education hoping to score sufficiently on the English Language Test of Skills (ELTS) to enter a regular academic programme area.However,even though some students meet the standard and are admitted into halls of higher education, many experience failing marks and ongoing difficulties in what continues to be a saga of more traditional teaching and testing environments that exacerbate their special needs. Undoubtedly, such scenarios only further disable and discourage diverse learners from expecting a full opportunity to learn and compete in the global learning community.

Critical Focus

The literacy decade will focus on the needs of children, youth and adults with the goal that people everywhere, regardless of their diverse needs, should be able to use the latest technologies. Educators and learners will need to develop digital and English literacy levels that support their ability to communicate and learn and perform in the emerging higher education community. Diverse learners require learning situ that connects them to authentic experiences that will help them compete in the wider society and beyond.You can learn more about adult and youth illiteracy rates by country and region, click on statistics on this page: http://www.unesco.org/education/litdecade

Literacy:A Global Educational Problem

Literacy is a good measure of educational achievement in developing regions. For young people in higher education from developing regions, literacy may be a better measure of education than enrollment in academic programme since it usually reflects a minimal level of successfully completed schooling. Defining literacy is becoming nearly as complex as defining diverse learners.Diverse learners are characterised as those with disabilities or special learning environment requirements for any of the nine reasons discussed earlier.The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation defines an illiterate person as someone who can not, with understanding, both read and write a short, simple statement on his or her everyday life. A person who can only read but not write, or can write but not read is considered to be illiterate.A person who can only write figures, his or her name or a memorised ritual phrase is also not considered literate (Source: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/illiteracy.htm).

Important Question #3: What factors can ensure learning diversity needs be met in new learning environments?

Global ESL Classroom Success Factors

Students of diversity will need access to new learning and technology tools and methods to improve literacy levels required for success in higher education. Building knowledge and skills through human-to-human communication provides diverse learners to have access to authentic materials in problem-based environments to help draw connections to new language context and content usage. In the past, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) was used to support language learners in education. Now, especially in higher education learners’ access to Net-worked based resources have moved beyond CALL to placing more emphasis on the need for more caring, competent, highly qualified teachers who understand the importance of Active learning and teaching, home and community involvement in meeting the needs of learners with new technologies to improve global competitive positioning in education and in the world of work.

What are the characteristics of differentiated learning and teaching?

Differentiated Learning Needs Assumptions

Carol Ann Tomlinson, C.A. (2000), one of the world’s most well-known experts in differentiated learning research has discovered six assumptions to consider when designing or planning learning environments for diverse learner or learning needs.

1. Instructional Design

“One size fits all”instruction is not a good fit for many learners in academically diverse classrooms.

2. Good Teaching

Good teaching is predicated upon a teacher’s clarity about what a learner should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of a given learning experience and set of expectations.

3. Time on Task

All learners focus much of their time and attention on key concepts, principles, and skills identified by the teacher as essential to growth and development - but with varying degrees of abstractness, complexity, open-endedness, problem clarity, and structure.

4. Flexibility

Flexible grouping of students enables all learners to work in a wide variety of configurations especially in classrooms with limited access to technology. This includes the full range of peers collaborative grouping, while targeting specific learning needs of each learner.

5. Different ways to learn

An appropriately differentiated classroom offers different routes to content, activities, and products in response to differing learner needs.

6. Culturally Relevant and Appropriate

In an appropriately differentiated classroom, all learners should work with “respectful tasks.”

Important Question #5: What is the solution to global differentiated learning in higher education to create active and engage learning in diverse students environments?

Teaching and Learning: Didactical Technology Solutions

Online learning and mobile technologies empower learning anywhere, anytime, anyhow for all learners if the appropriate and essential conditions are present (www.iste.org/nets). New Web. 2.0 tools provide multiple ways for educators and students to learn and help each other to learn.

Specialised use of laptop and handheld technologies can perform the role of assistive technologies to empower learners’ individual capacity to overcome or cope with disabilities or special needs. These conditions result in empowerment for individuals to participate in ones own culture and community, which should be the ultimate vision and mission of any educational system.

What instructional needs in educational settings should to be satisfied to promote literacy in a digital age?

Computer Technology and Strategies

• Access to hardware, software and connectivity to the Internet
• Access to meaningful, high quality, culturally relevant content in local languages
• Access to creating, sharing, and exchanging digital content
• Access to educators who know how to use digital tools and resources

Reading Printed and Electronic Material

Many literacy and language learners have difficulty reading print or electronic material.

This can be due to visual problems or low literacy levels, the processor text or the web page design. However, words can sometimes be highlighted as text is read. There are many types of assistive technology to help learners with the printed word. Many assistive technology devices described use Text- To-Speech (TTS) or Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to support language learners or those with reading disabilities. Text-to-Speech (TTS) is software used to read aloud a computer document such as word.

Reading Skills and Comprehension are challenges for many diverse learners with disabilities and low literacy skills who struggle with their reading and comprehension. There are many computer software programmes that assist learners with developing their reading skills.

Writing and Spelling

Some learners struggle with written expression because they have difficulties with spelling and or handwriting. Common problems learners may encounter are: limited spelling and vocabulary, letter reversals, dysgraphia, grammar and punctuation, structure.

Solutions:

Microsoft Office Tools Word Package System preferences to select activate features for users with disabilities Text-speech on keyboards Spelling and grammar check, Thesaurus Review and tracking features for writing support

Planning and Organising

Some individuals with learning disabilities also have difficulties in the area of organisation resulting from limitations and attention span,memory and retrieval and planning ability.They commonly struggle with timetables, homework notebooks, organising course notes and handouts, studying for tests and working effectively on long-term projects.

Solutions:

Concept mapping software (inspiration.com)

Draw feature in MS Office Excel spreadsheet Other graphic tools Tables and Charts Processing and Understanding Language

Some individuals have difficulty understanding oral language because of problems with language development, auditory processing or hearing. They are often described as "visual learners" and benefit when information is presented in a variety of ways.

Solutions:

Multimedia, PowerPoint and Internet tools Listening and hearing considerations may help learners better understand speech more easily and may improve attention and comprehension.

Other Considerations

What is rarely discussed is how universities must better equip students to respond to new educational demands, such as learning in English and opportunities to compete globally despite their differences; how organisations of higher learning need to better meet the growing demand among diverse learners for improved accessibility and convenience to learning environments.

Value Adding Requirements

• High Quality technology resources
• Quality of use and accessibility to learning and technologies
• Adequacy of faculty education and professional development
• Exposure to technologically proficient role models
• Financial resources to support individual needs and research
• Examples: http://www2.edc.org/NCIP/

Future Outlook

Research by National Student Engagements studies show that students’ academic confidence relates to their expected academic engagement, academic, and expected transition difficulties. Therefore, it is critical that educators and leaders place a high degree of importance on creating the supportive campus with active learning environments made possible by the a myriad on ICTs that offer the potential to empower students, faculty, and leaders.

The history of science is replete with theories that have been thoroughly believed by the wisest men and were then thoroughly discredited. (Popkin & Stroll)

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References

Assistive Technology.
http://www.nwt.literacy.ca/adultlit/assistec/contents.htm
Pittman, J. (2005).Assistive Technology Course. CERTI.
Available: http://www.uc.edu/certi
Pittman, J. (2006). Preserving human foundations of education in technology environments. In Benton, J.& P.
Swami (Eds.) Creating cultures of peace: Pedagogical thought and practice.Mawah, New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Publishers.
Pittman, J. (2003). Restructuring teacher education: Building a theoretical base for an effective professional development model. In Fitzgerald, M.A., Orey,M.& Branch R.M. (Eds.)
Educational Media and Technology Yearbook 2003.Westport, CT. Libraries Unlimited Member of Greenwood Publishing Group.
Pittman, J. (2003).Empowering individuals, schools, and communities. In Solomon, G., Allen, N., & Resta, P. (Eds.).
Toward digital equity: Bridging the divide in education.New York,NY: Allyn & Bacon.
Staples, A., & Pittman, J. (2003). Building inclusive learning communities. In Solomon, G., Allen, N., & Resta, P. (Eds.),
Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the divide in education.New York,NY: Allyn & Bacon.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Literacy Decade Report
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/illiteracy.htm
Tomlinson, C.A. (2000).Assumptions for Differentiated Learning

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Dr. Joyce Pittman is the Director for Center for Teaching and Learning with Technology, Office of the Vice Provost and Chief Academic Officer at the United
Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in Al-Ain, an oasis city about an hour and a half drive from Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The Center for Teaching and
Learning Technology (CTLT) at the United Arab Emirates University introduces new trends in teaching, learning and assessment, facilitates the
development and deployment of effective educational products and services and provides essential scholarly and classroom support for UAEU faculty. Dr.
Pittman is the recipient of many national and international honors and awards for her research and teaching. Her worldwide research and educational
reform projects continue to contribute to the field of Educational Media and teacher education. In the,UAE her research and teaching experience included
field-based research on education reform issues and teaching practices to expand learning opportunities for English as Second Language Learners (ESL).
She is an active speaker,member/co-founder of the National Digital Equity Task Force, an initiative that is supported by the U.S. Department of Education,
a Member of the National Commission on the Future of Teacher Education and Technology, Association of Teacher Educators (ATE), American
Educational Research Association (AERA) and other professional organizations.Her extensive writing and publication portfolio include books, chapters,
refereed journal articles and electronic publications