Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Strategies for Enhancing Creativity in the Classroom(Saudi Digital Library, 2020) AlKhamis, Arwa Mohammed; Kathy, HooverThe purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies of enhancing creativity in the classroom and teaching strategies. The study involved 9 participants in total; all participants were teachers. The research relied on random sampling to select the study participants. The researcher used the observation sheets to gather data from the study participants. The study employed qualitative data analysis methods to synthesize the data collected from the study respondents. The collected data from respondents during the study were analyzed in tabular form, while tables were also be used to draw patterns on responses provided. Data was coded and specific themes were identified, which include classroom participation, active strategies, inhibitors of creativity, internet creativity and creativity tools. The researcher found that this study highlights that collaboration can be a very useful strategy to enhance creativity in the classroom. The researcher noted that asking open-ended and random questions keep the learners engaged in the class activities. The researcher also observed that the Internet proved to be a great avenue for the young children, because a range of learning opportunities available on the internet can increase children’s problem solving abilities, and critical thinking skills, which enhances creativity. The strategies discussed in this research are all proven to be effective in making early childhood education a better and improved experience. the researcher is planning to continue with further research and explore more about the field of enhancing creativity in the classroom.9 0Item Restricted Exploring Teachers' Perspectives on the Determinants of Student Engagement in English classes in Secondary Schools in Saudi Arabia: A Qualitative Study(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alshdokhi, Abdulkarim Abdulrahman; Graham, FrenchAbstract This qualitative study explores teachers’ perspectives on the determinants of student engagement in English language classes in secondary schools in Saudi Arabia. Student engagement is widely recognised as a critical factor influencing learning outcomes; however, limited research has examined this concept within the Saudi secondary education context from teachers’ viewpoints. The study aims to provide a contextualised understanding of the factors shaping student engagement in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 secondary school English teachers. This method was selected to balance structure and flexibility, allowing for in-depth exploration of participants’ lived experiences and professional insights. The interview data were analysed thematically using the six-phase framework proposed by Braun and Clarke (2022). The analysis identified seven key themes representing the major determinants of student engagement in Saudi secondary school English classes. These findings indicate that student engagement is a systemic and ecological phenomenon shaped by the interaction of pedagogical practices, curriculum and assessment structures, teacher–student relationships, classroom and school environments, and broader sociocultural influences. Areas of both consensus and divergence among teachers were evident, highlighting the contextual and complex nature of engagement in EFL settings. The study contributes to the academic discourse on student engagement by offering theoretically informed and context-specific insights grounded in teachers’ perspectives. It also provides evidence-based implications for teaching practices, professional development, and policy initiatives aimed at enhancing student engagement in English language education within Saudi secondary schools.7 0Item Restricted The Impacts of the NAPLAN Test System on the Mental Health and Well-being of Educators and Teaching Strategies in Australia(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alghamdi, Sahar Abdullah; Lucas, Carey; Terry, CummingThe National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy is Australia’s standard procedure to measure the performance of students in literacy and numeracy. Although this procedure was intended to identify weak areas and address them by allocating more resources and implementing appropriate strategies, it has been criticised in research due to its potential to dictate teaching strategies, curriculum development, and its overall impact on the mental health and well-being of students. This study aimed to investigate its implications on the mental health and well-being of teachers as well as the teaching strategies. Furthermore, it also aimed to study how teachers integrate student-centred, holistic and individually-tailored teaching strategies. A scoping review was implemented in this study to identify and extract the findings of the existing articles on this topic. Online research databases such as EBSCO Educational Research Database, ProQuest and Web of Science were searched using Keywords and Boolean Operators. A total of 11 articles were included in this scoping review. The extracted data indicate that NAPLAN impacts the well-being of teachers through excessive mental pressure and work responsibilities. It also influences teaching strategies, curriculum development and the learning quality of students. Although teachers try to implement student-centred and holistic teaching strategies. Based on this scoping review, a literature gap is identified regarding how teachers ensure holistic learning for students, which can be addressed through further primary studies.7 0Item Restricted Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Routine DAST-10 Screening for Opioid Use Disorder in NHS Primary Care.(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alshammari, Manar; Malcolm, Robert; Medland, Sarah; Telfer-Thomas, EllenAbstract Background: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is an escalating public health and policy challenge in the UK. While opioids remain essential for acute and palliative pain, long-term prescribing increased sharply, thereby contributing to dependence, overdose, and an increase in mortality. Despite these harms, systematic screening for OUD is not part of routine National Health Service (NHS) primary care. It is therefore important to identify effective and cost-effectiveness screening strategies Methods: This study combined a pragmatic review of the literature with a decision-analytic model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of introducing the Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST10) in NHS primary care. Evidence used to populate the model was extracted from published literature and authoritative national data sources , including NICE guidance , the British National Formulary ( BNF) , the NHS Reference cost and the electronic Market information Tool (eMIT) .These sources data on epidemiology provide screening accuracy, treatment effectiveness, health-related quality of life, and costs relevant to opioids used disorder withing the UK context . The analysis was conducted from the perspective of the NHS and personal social services (PSS) over a 12-month time horizon, with the results expressed in terms of cost, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs).A deterministic Sensitivity analyses were performed to test the robustness of the findings. Results: Systematic screening using the DAST-10 was found to be both less costly and more effective than usual care. The expected average cost per patient was £349.18 with screening, compared with £446.69 under usual care. Health outcomes were also better in the screening arm, with an average of 0.8946 QALYs per patient, compared to 0.8703 QALYs for usual care representing a gain of 0.024 QALYs. Because screening achieved greater health benefits at lower cost, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was negative, indicating dominance. Net monetary benefit (NMB) analysis confirmed that screening remained the economically preferred option across all willingness-to-pay thresholds tested, from £20,000 to £70,000 per QALY, including the Treasury Green Book’s societal valuation of health gains. Conclusion: This analysis suggests that implementing DAST-10 screening in UK primary care could improve health outcomes for people with OUD while also reducing overall NHS costs. The findings suggest that screening is a cost-effective intervention when considered against NICEs threshold for decision making. The model did not capture wider societal costs (e.g., criminal justice, productivity losses) or the long-term downstream effects of untreated OUD, thereby meaning that the benefits of screening may be underestimated. Future research should explore these elements and test sensitivity to key assumptions, including treatment uptake and retention5 0Item Restricted Professional Development Programmes for New Faculty Members in Saudi Universities: Current State, Needs, and Proposed Improvements(Saudi Digital Library, 2026) Alamri, Saeed; Janet, Goodall; Helen, LewisThis study analyses the current state of training programmes for new faculty in Saudi Arabian public universities, identifies the training needs of new faculty, and provides recommendations for improvement. The aim of the research is to address the literature gap around training in Saudi universities, make actionable recommendations around training design and implementation for policymakers and training managers in the higher education system, and ultimately to enhance the quality of university education in Saudi Arabia to help meet the goals of the Vision 2030 national development plan by ensuring new faculty are given an effective start to their careers. The methodology employed is an explanatory sequential design using a mixed methods approach involving the collection and statistical analysis of quantitative data through a survey instrument, and the collection and thematic analysis of qualitative data through semi-structured interviews. The convenience and volunteer sampling method led to survey data including 1,131 respondents, and 23 participants were subsequently interviewed to provide further clarity and depth to these results, all faculty members and senior training managers from the 28 public universities currently operating in Saudi Arabia. The findings revealed that training programme implementation, policies and plans for new faculty members in Saudi universities demonstrate multiple critical shortcomings, and needs analysis is rare and poorly conducted. There is significant variation between universities, with some lacking any training programmes altogether, while others implemented programmes in an incomplete manner and failed to meet the actual needs of new faculty members. The study further identified the most important training programme needs for new faculty members. Universities should prioritise implementing peer mentoring programmes, providing more holistic support for study abroad scholarships, and conducting training courses in teaching skills, research, education technologies, community service, and management. The study proposes a framework based on these findings to improve new faculty training in Saudi universities, with a specific focus on enhancing programme effectiveness and ensuring consistent alignment with faculty needs and institutional goals to increase performance outcomes from faculty training and development.6 0Item Restricted المشكلات الاجتماعية وتأثيرها على مستوى جودة الحياة : دراسة تطبيقية على عينة من الأخصائيين الاجتماعيين في مستشفيات مدينة الرياض(Saudi Digital Library, 2026) الحربي, جهز جزاء; جابر, سامية محمدهدفت الدراسة إلى الكشف عن تأثير المشكلات النفسية والاجتماعية على جودة الحياة لدى الأخصائيين الاجتماعيين بمستشفيات مدينة الرياض، وذلك من خلال الوقوف على تأثير المشكلات النفسية والاجتماعية على بعد جودة الصحة العامة، والكشف عن تأثير المشكلات النفسية والاجتماعية على بعد جودة الحياة الأسرية والاجتماعية، والتعرف على تأثير المشكلات النفسية والاجتماعية على بعد جودة العواطف والحياة الوجدانية، والوقوف على تأثير المشكلات النفسية والاجتماعية على بعد جودة الصحة النفسية. استخدمت الدراسة المنهج الوصفي التحليلي، وتوصلت إلى عدة نتائج أهمها:ثبوت صحة الفرضية التي تنص على وجود علاقة ذات دلالة إحصائية عند مستوى دلالة (θ ≥ 05) بين درجة أبعاد الضغوط النفسية والاجتماعية وبعد (جودة الصحة العامة) لدى الأخصائيين الاجتماعيين في مستشفيات مدينة الرياض.ثبوت صحة الفرضية التي تنص على وجود علاقة ذات دلالة إحصائية عند مستوى دلالة (θ ≥ 05) بين درجة أبعاد الضغوط النفسية والاجتماعية وبعد (جودة الحياة الأسرية والاجتماعية) لدى الأخصائيين الاجتماعيين بمستشفيات مدينة الرياض .. إلى اخره.5 0Item Restricted Foreign Direct Investment Reforms in Saudi Arabia under Vision 2030: Institutional Transformation and Strategic Competition with the UAE(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Albluwi, Abdulrahman; Aparna, RaviThis paper examines how the Vision 2030 reforms contributed to the long-term improvement of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Saudi Arabia and assesses whether these developments have positioned the Kingdom to rival the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a preferred regional investment destination. Three objectives guide the analysis: (1) examining Saudi Arabia’s FDI regime before and after Vision 2030; (2) evaluating the impact of the reforms; and (3) comparing the FDI environments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The findings demonstrate that pre-2016 efforts to attract FDI were hindered by inadequate investors’ protections and poor regulatory transparency. However, Vision 2030 introduced accountability measures, institutional changes and, most notably reforms in the Saudi law. This law resolved core investor concerns by introducing robust dispute resolution provisions, transparent industry guidelines, and enhanced legal safeguards. The reforms significantly improved investors’ confidence, facilitated their market access, and contributed to a rise in FDI, particularly in non- oil sectors such as technology and tourism. While the UAE remains preferable to international investors, Saudi Arabia’s centralised approach is closing the gap through aggressive domestic reform Although differences remain, Saudi Arabia regulatory transformation marks a critical step in its ambition to become a leading regional FDI hub. The paper concludes that Saudi Arabia has not only met its internal reform goals but is increasingly positioned to challenge the UAE's dominance in attracting foreign investment.2 0Item Restricted AI in Lung Health: Advanced Automated Solutions for Lung Cancer Diagnosis and Prognosis Using Multimodality of Medical Data(Saudi Digital Library, 2026) Alshmrani, Goram Mufarah M; Richard, Jiang; Qiang, NiLung nodules are areas of higher density in the lungs that can happen for a number of reasons, such as smoking or being exposed to airborne pollutants for a long time. It is essential to find and classify tumors on Computed Tomography (CT) scans as soon as possible so that lung diseases can be diagnosed and evaluated, as well as for planning and making treatment plans. For the diagnosis, it is essential to understand the difference between typical lung diseases like Tuberculosis, Pneumonia, and lung cancer, as all the diseases have similar symptoms initially. Initially, all the diseases have respiratory symptoms like cough, difficulty breathing, and chest pain. Pulmonary infiltrates or nodules can be observed in lung cancer, pneumonia, COVID-19, and tuberculosis, posing difficulty distinguishing between the diseases. Thus, this thesis has performed the classification of different types of diseases using X-rays by proposing a novel deep-learning framework for the multi-class classification of lung diseases, including lung cancer. The experimental results show that the Visual Geometry Group Network (VGG) 19 + Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) outperformed other existing work with 96.48% accuracy in the multiclassification of lung diseases. Moreover, once lung tumor is detected, precise localization enables healthcare practitioners to ascertain the tumor's dimensions, which is crucial for staging and devising treatment strategies. Hence, this research proposes an advanced deep learning model called the Universal Network (Unet) to accurately segment lung tumors utilizing multiple types of imaging data, specifically CT and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans. The intricate structures of the suggested models, which incorporate several fusion approaches such as early fusion, late fusion, dense fusion, hyperdense fusion, and hyper-dense VGG16 U-Net, are discussed in detail. The experimental results, particularly the performance of the hyper-dense VGG16 model, instill confidence in the proposed models, as it outperformed all other analyses, receiving a Dice score of 73%. Survival analysis for lung cancer patients is a crucial aspect of treatment planning and outcome prediction. Therefore, in-depth stage classification using the TNM (Tumor, Node, metastases) staging system of Lung Cancer is of utmost importance. This thesis suggests an innovative method to classify the overall stage of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by employing multimodal data, including multi-view CT images and textual clinical information. A comparative analysis of Vision Transformer (ViT) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, evaluating both direct classification and TNM-based approaches are proposed. The experimental results prove that the ViT-based direct model achieves superior accuracy 98.75%, improving accuracy by 8.75% over the TNM-based ViT model, while also reducing computational complexity by 66.67%. Similarly, the CNN-based direct model achieves 87% accuracy, outperforming the TNM-based CNN model by 7%, with a corresponding reduction in computational demands. The use of the proposed methods in real-time can help practitioners to detect lung cancer and predict the survival of the patient effectively.16 0Item Restricted Understanding the role of PPAR-γ in peripheral nerve injury: cellular and transcriptomic approach(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alhamdi, Alaa; Rayner, Melissa; Phillips, JamesAlthough microsurgery remains the standard clinical approach for managing peripheral nerve injury (PNI), clinical outcomes are often suboptimal. Recovery following injury is often poor, particularly over long distances or significant gaps, due to the slow regeneration rate (~1–3 mm per day) and the lack of approved regenerative pharmacological therapies. Thus, researchers are exploring ways to accelerate nerve regeneration. To bridge the gap between previous animal findings and clinical translation, the effect of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR-γ) on neurite outgrowth was investigated using a human neuroblastoma cell line (SH-SY5Y), a 3D co-culture of SH-SY5Y with Schwann cells (SCL4.1/F7), and a chemotherapeutic-induced degenerative in vitro model. Neurite outgrowth increased with 10 μM ibuprofen across all conditions examined in the study, including SH-SY5Y monocultures, 3D co-cultures, and the chemotherapeutic injury model. To better understand the role of PPAR-γ in a broad range of relevant cell types, a publicly available single-cell RNA sequencing dataset (GSE216665) of rat sciatic nerve post-chronic constriction injury was analysed at multiple time points and compared to the naïve condition. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, followed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses at early stages of injury across Schwann and myeloid populations. The dynamic changes in PPAR-γ (Pparg) expression following injury in Schwann cells and myeloid cells suggest a potential role of PPAR-γ in nerve regeneration. Preliminary co-expression and protein protein interaction analyses were also performed to explore PPAR-γ-related signalling in nerve repair and immune regulation. An epidemiological study using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)-Aurum database was also conducted to gain insights into the demographics, common types and sites of injury, and associated comorbidities of PNI patients in the UK between 2000 and 2001. These insights are crucial for developing more effective therapeutic strategies.8 0Item Restricted الصفحة النفسية العصبية الإكلينيكية للتوحد كما تتضح في تشتت الانتباه مفرط الحركة والإلكثيثيميا: دراسة إكلينيكية(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) اليامي, صالح; زيدان, أكرمحاولت الدراسة الحالية معرفة الصفحة النفسية العصبية الإكلينيكية لمضطربي التوحد من الأطفال باستخدام مقياس وكسلر وتحديد المعايير التشخيصية للأداء العصبي النفسي المعرفي لاضطراب التوحد. كما هدفت الدراسة إلي التعرف علي طبيعة العلاقة بين تشتت الانتباه مفرط الحركة والإليكثيثيميا لدى عينة من أطفال التوحد ، والتعرف علي الفروق بين الجنسين من التوحديين في كل من تشتت الانتباه مفرط الحركة والإليكثيثيميا، وكذا التعرف على إمكانية التنبؤ بالتوحد من خلال تشتت الانتباه مفرط الحركة والإليكثيثيميا.تكونت عينة الدراسة من (30) مفحوص من الذكور و( 30) من الإناث, من الذين تم تشخيصهم بالتوحد طبقا لمقياس جيليام. تراوحت أعمارهم من (8: 12) بمتوسط عمري (9.2) عامًا، وانحراف معياري قدره (0.23). وتمثلت قائمة الاختبارات في هذه الدراسة، من اختبار تشتت الانتباه لجمعة سيد يوسف, ومقياس اللإليكثيثيميا لمصطفى مظلوم, ومقياس وكسلر لذكاء الأطفال، ومقياس تقدير مهارات الانتباه لعبد الرحمن سليمان وجمال نافع و هناء عبد الحافظ. وكشفت نتائج الدراسة عن وجود فروق جوهرية فى الأداء تعزى لمتغير الجنس بين مجموعات الدراسة، وهناك فروق وظيفية معرفية ونفسية عصبية بين الجنسين من مضطربي التوحد في الإليكثيثيميا وتشتت الانتباه . واعتمدت الدراسة علي المنهج الوصفي: بطريقة الارتباط والمقارنة، والمنهج الكلينيكي. وأوضحت نتائج الدراسة تباين الأداء بين الذكور والإناث التوحديين على مقياس وكسلر لذكاء الأطفال وتباين الصفحة النفسية العصبية الإكلينيكية لمضطربي التوحد من الجنسين, وأن مقياس وكسلر لذكاء الأطفال أداة جيدة للفرز العصبي الإكلينيكي للأطفال التوحديين من الجنسيين. كما أوضحت نتائج الدراسة وجود علاقة ارتباطية ذات دلالة بين تشتت الانتباه مفرط الحركة والإليكثيثيميا لدى الذكور والإناث من مضطربي التوحد. وكشفت نتائج الدراسة عن وجود فروق جوهرية فى الأداء تعزى لمتغير الجنس بين مجموعات الدراسة، وهناك فروق وظيفية معرفية ونفسية عصبية بين الجنسين من مضطربي التوحد في الإليكثيثيميا وتشتت الانتباه .1 0