Browsing by Subject "Saudi Arabia"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item “Against Marrying a Stranger:” Marital Matchmaking Technologies in Saudi Arabia(2016-10) Al-Dawood, AdelWebsites and applications that match and connect individuals for romantic purposes are commonly used in the Western world. However, there have been few previous investigations focusing on cultural factors that affect the adoption of similar technologies in religiously conservative non-Western cultures. In this study, we examine the socio-technical and cultural factors that influence the perceptions and use of matchmaking technologies in Saudi Arabia. We report the methods and findings of interviews with 18 Saudi nationals (9 males and 9 females) with diverse demographics and backgrounds. We provide qualitatively generated insights into the major themes reported by our participants related to the common approaches to matchmaking, the current role of technology, and concerns regarding matchmaking technologies in this cultural context. We relate these themes to specific implications for designing marital matchmaking technologies in Saudi Arabia and we outline opportunities for future investigations.Item Building Trust And Preserving Privacy In Marital Matchmaking Technologies(2024-03) Al-Dawood, AdelFinding a life partner is a complicated process. While traditional methods such as arranged marriages were perceived to be successful in the past, many life aspects have changed that have made finding a life partner a messy and complicated process. The introduction of technology was meant to improve the process and unfortunately has made it more complicated. This is further complicated by the diversity of humans across the globe with different values that guide the design of technological systems. While online matchmaking platforms have offered more options for users, the transition from online to offline is rarely accounted for and left as a burden on the user. This is critical for a conservative culture such as Saudi Arabia where the transition can be very tricky. While Saudi Arabians have found ways to circumvent and appropriate current technologies, better design can make the process more suitable for Saudi Arabians. Through my qualitative and quantitative studies, I was able to define the requirements for a high-fidelity marital matchmaking prototype, TBYAAN (Trust-Building for Young Adults in an Anonymous Network), which was utilized to understand how trust can be built while preserving privacy during seeking a potential spouse online. While I found that different phone authentication and partial parental involvement were the most associated with higher levels of trust, participants expressed that the content generated by other participants was considered a good indicator of trust. Also, I have found that participants consider TBYAAN to be more trustworthy than Twitter (a familiar social media platform where recruiting occurred) and were less concerned about their privacy being compromised overall. Future work on TBYAAN will help understand how trust building and privacy preservation can be improved for users of online platforms.Item Exploring the Academic and Social Integration of Students who are Blind and Visually Impaired Attending a Saudi Arabian University(2022-08) Ajaj, RoqayahThere is a dearth of evaluation and research on academic and social integration for college students who are blind and visually impaired (BVI), not only in Saudi Arabia, but around the globe. Failure to integrate students academically and socially at the university could affect the student's self-esteem, self-determination, and sense of belonging, which may ultimately lead to attrition. This exploratory study sought to understand the academic and social experiences of college students who are BVI in a public university in Saudi Arabia, from their perspective. A qualitative method was used to collect the data for this study. 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted. 14 students who were BVI and four administrators were interviewed. The interviews were conducted in Arabic and translated to English for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the university, through the male and female disability centers, provided a number of academic and social services to support students who are BVI. The male and female students reported different experiences at the university, with the male students experiencing greater barriers than female students. Both male and female students reported academic and social barriers that prevented them from being fully included at the university. Some of these barriers included inaccessible course materials, inaccessible lectures, inaccessible physical environment, and inaccessible social events/activities. The administrators were aware of these barriers and were working towards remedying them. The findings revealed a need to 1) raise more awareness about blindness and how it affects the individual at the university through trainings and workshops for both students and faculty, and 2) conduct more research and evaluation about blindness and how blindness affects students academically and socially. The results can be used to develop disability awareness and assessment tools for the services and accommodations provided to students who are BVI.Item Narratives of Becoming: Saudi Women's Self-formation in the Space of International Student Mobility(2020-10) Seithers, LauraFor decades, international student mobility has fostered individual and social change through the production of a cosmopolitan global elite, yet few studies have closely examined the nuances of international student self-formation or the ways in which dominant discourses of who they are and who they can be influence the process. To interrogate these issues and make visible the relations of power constituting the space of international student mobility, this dissertation focuses on the self-formation of Saudi Arabian women international students on higher education scholarships in the United States. Using a narrative inquiry methodology and poststructural feminist listening guide analysis, I draw on repeat, in-depth interviews with four Saudi women students to explore how they make sense of themselves and their experiences in relation to the material and discursive components of their international student mobility. Grounded in Deleuze’s concepts of becoming and assemblage in connection with a poststructural feminist reading of agency, I advance three primary arguments. First, I affirm international student subjectivity as a process of becoming rather than being, arguing that Saudi women students’ identities are neither singular nor fixed, but instead always in flux. Second, I contend that international student mobility for Saudi women is a spatial assemblage which both shapes their interactions and is shaped by the self-formation, agency, and geopolitical relations linked to their mobility. Third, I locate Saudi women students’ agency in their naming of the discourses that would bind them, their re-negotiation of self within and against those discourses, and the fleeting lines of flight they traverse to go beyond them. Woven throughout the dissertation and these arguments is a critique of global higher education as productive of neoliberal, individualized subjects and a call to re-configure international student mobility as a space that looks beyond essentializing categorizations or habitual trajectories of student self-formation and allows for openness to the not-yet-known.