Educational Innovation: ISC-Manama SABIS® E-Book – The International School of Choueifat
Education_BH: Innovation and Excellence celebrates the remarkable innovations implemented in Bahrain’s schools and universities. We learned about these innovations, the process, the challenges, and the lessons learned from some of the leading educational institutions in the Kingdom. Read more in our latest issue.
Interactive technology that caters to different learning styles and needs of students.
SABIS® E-Books are digitized versions of the SABIS® Book Series, a pillar of the SABIS® Educational System, available to students through a downloadable application on their tablets and as a web-based solution that students can access anytime and anywhere through the SABIS® Digital Platform.
The digital series includes subject content embedded with a plethora of features that enhance and support student learning, such as animations, videos, and audio recordings, in addition to computer-correctable interactive activities, embedded glossaries and dictionaries link to prerequisite materials, and additional external resources.
SABIS® E-Books also include user-friendly and dynamic features, such as an interactive table of contents, as well as bookmarking, highlighting, note-taking, and drawing tools, and are continuously being reviewed and updated to include new features that enhance the learning experience.
These innovative features that distinguish the SABIS® E-Book series make it an effective vehicle for interactive 21st-century learning and contribute to instilling in students the SABIS® EDGE, a balance of academics, life preparation, and self-development that helps them find success in university and their careers.
How was the innovation planned?
The initiation of the SABIS® E-Book project was a natural projection for SABIS® as an organization that emphasizes the importance of R&D and technology in education. With the digital era upon us, SABIS® aimed to transform and digitize the physical book series. Shifting to digital books was intended to streamline the delivery and availability of learning material to students around the SABIS(R) network, whilst also improving the learning experience in the classroom and beyond.
What were the challenges faced during implementation?
When the SABIS® E-Book was ready to be downloaded on student tablets across the network, the load on the servers was much larger than initially estimated, which proved to be a challenge for the team at HQ. In response to the new load, SABIS® quickly scaled up operations and expanded the infrastructure to accommodate the 60,000+ students downloading their E-Books before the start of the Academic Year.
Give us a brief assessment of your results.
The result of SABIS® E-Books has been very rewarding. Our students continuously engage with theirlessons even more as the embedded features within the SABIS® E-Books are meeting the needs of the different types of learners in the classroom. Data has shown that students interact heavily with the on-demand interactive assessments available throughout the content, which allows students to answer different types of questions on the concepts they are learning and further solidify their understanding of the material.
In hindsight, what were the most valuable lessons learned while implementing the innovation? Could things have been done differently?
A valuable lesson we learned while implementing the SABIS® E-Book is that technology and innovation are always evolving. They can always be improved on and can be transformed to suit new needs. New titles and features are consistently being added to the series. One of the latest innovations explored by SABIS® for E-Books is interactive simulation, which involves creating life-like experiences, where 2D and 3D digital information is integrated in real-time in response to the student’s actions.
