Dr. Safad Hossam al-Shammari, a professor from the department of public relations at the college of media has contributed in the proceedings of the annual international conference sponsored by the college of basic education at the University of Diyala under the slogan (We raise our awareness for serving students: scientific insights of realistic challenges) with a research paper on (the digital divide in Iraqi universities and its impact on the experience of e-learning: a study of a sample of university students).
During this study, Dr. Safad al-Shammari explained the concept of digital divide that refers to the gap between those able to benefit from the digital age and those who are not, stating that according to his belief the Iraqi universities remained free from the healthy investment of digital technology, except in specific cases required by administrative tasks and study requirements for specific disciplines, so that most faculty, staff and students in the country were having no expertize in dealing with digital platforms before the epidemic which is something that can be described as a digital knowledge gap that had vivid repercussions on the e-learning mechanism adopted for the first time in universities during the academic year (2019-2020). He added that the adoption of e-learning experience in Iraq in a major and absolute way has provided a perception of the reality of the digital possibilities of university formations as well as the electronic skills of faculty and students and the need to qualify them in a way that reshapes the cognitive image of students which has become one of the necessities of the time.
