An adaptation of the course experience questionnaire to the Arab learning context

This study reports on an adaptation of the course experience questionnaire (CEQ) to the Arab learning context. An Arabic version of the CEQ was used to test the perceptions of a random sample of students at a public university in the UAE as regards their learning environment. The participants were 488 women students who study at nine different colleges and are aged between 20 and 28 years. They completed the CEQ in their final semester at the university just before their graduation with the aim of indicating their satisfaction with their study programmes. The results showed a strong reliability for the CEQ (Cronbach’s alpha =.90), and the construct validity test confirmed the five-factor structure of the questionnaire. These findings support the use of the CEQ as an acceptable benchmark of teaching quality in higher education in the Arab world and strengthen the evidence that the CEQ is a valid and reliable measurement when examining students’ perceptions of their learning outside of the Western world.