Professional development has a major role in addressing the skill gaps of teachers. Recently, much effort has been focused on improving teaching practices in Saudi Arabia. Here we aim to determine Saudi teachers professional development needs in the higher educational system. We also focus on skill needs, training programs, factors affecting teacher performance, and teacher's control of their own professional development. Here, through face-to-face interviews, we explore how current professional development strategies could be improved to better meet the needs of academic teachers views through face to face interviews data collection to address the questions of what teachers needs to develop and support their professional knowledge, how it affect their teaching methods and what opportunities and roles provided to them based on the instructional systems. Finally, the study illustrates how the professional development among based on their experiences and practice could be improved and how they encounter their participations and interaction to facilitate their development among higher educational institutions in Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi educational system, many factors have led to a various need for teaching qualifications in higher educational institutions. One main aim of this study was to determine the perception of college teachers on how to assess the effectiveness of the teaching process and what most students consider when evaluating their teachers. Further, it aimed to investigate the problems that academic teachers face in providing well-planned and effective services. To determine teachers' perspectives, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 teachers selected at random from science departments at Najran University. It focused on several areas of teaching methods, such as curriculum programming, syllabus coverage of classes, teachers, and methods of effective teaching. Evaluation and student feedback was recorded. The collected data were analyzed through a list of key issues, concerns and themes to be discussed by the set of participants. The results revealed that teachers had some difficulties in addressing practical problems with implementing the current curriculum, using sufficient supplementation for teaching methods, and understanding validation of the evaluation process presented by students on the teachers' achievements. Based on these findings, it is crucial to take teachers' points of view into consideration in the development of the curriculum process, the exam system, resources, facilities and the evaluation system. Teacher involvement will create ownership and allow them to have an active role in teaching students with more devotion and commitment to evaluation. This will lead to significant improvement in teaching methods of science at all college levels.

Although the success of graduate students is heavily influenced by their supervisors, there is a lack of documented graduate student insight into their learning experience in countries with recent expansions of graduate programs. To provide rich, in-depth qualitative data on graduate student and faculty supervisor perspectives on students' learning experiences, we conducted in-depth individual interviews with final-year graduate students and their supervisors at Najran University in Saudi Arabia. We asked participants two open-ended questions about the quality of teaching and learning in their program and how this quality could be improved. Interview transcripts were coded to identify and categorize recurring themes. We found that graduate students and their supervisors had differing perceptions of students' learning experiences. Students indicated that the organization and development of learning experiences needed to be guided by their supervisors. Additionally, students expressed concerns regarding the main concern expressed by students as will be described in the results section with more details and more accurate reflection with the need for high-quality learning experiences. On the other hand, supervisors gave examples of effective teaching practices, including building self-confidence in student decision making. These findings could be used to develop curriculum content, support faculty use of effective teaching strategies, and improve practices in graduate programs and could further stimulate broad discussions of shared decision-making and evaluations of student and teacher performance.

This paper describes the perceptions of undergraduate students and their advisors on the role and challenges of academic guidance in Saudi Arabia. For this, five focus groups comprising six to eight students and one advisor were interviewed, and their responses to four questions were qualitatively analyzed. The responses from all groups emerged in four major themes, two related to the student's perspectives and two related to those of the advisors. Overall, the students identified the unfamiliarity with the purpose of academic guidance and a failure of their advisors to follow their progress as the primary challenges. The advisors highlighted the lack of student feedback and academic guidance training as the obstacles to successful student progress. The findings presented here suggest that universities should incorporate student and advisor feedback into the academic guidance systems to ensure student success.