Resumen de Educational Technology in the Syrian Arab Republic
Of the eight million people in Syria, about 25 per cent are enrolled in public schools and universities. The Syrian government allocates only 7.4 per cent of its budget for education because a great deal has to be spent on defence spending. Educational technology is suggested as a means to upgrade the efficiency of instruction without considerable increase in expenditure. For this purpose the Ministry of Education established the Central Department of Audiovisual Media, and a centre for the production of simple aids supported by experiments conducted by individual scholars. Several language laboratories were installed to improve foreign language learning. Most efforts, however, have been concentrated in two main areas: the utilisation of educational television for supporting school curricula in primary and secondary education; and the application of programmed instruction and systems analysis in developing multi‐media kits for training teachers and students in specialised areas, for example, Arabic grammar or the operation of audiovisual equipment in the Faculty of Education, Damascus University. Research studies have also been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of combined multi‐media kits and programmed instruction into integrated units that would improve instruction without substantially increasing expenses.
