Out of the keenness of the Acting Dean of the Joint First Year, Dr. Azzah bint Muhammad Bannunah, to develop the academic and professional performance of the deanship students and to urge them to achieve more accomplishments, the Student Advisory and Support Unit, under the supervision of His Excellency Dr. Wahib bin Dakhilullah Al-Harbi, the Vice Dean for Educational Affairs (male section) at Al-Abdiyyah, organized a training course entitled: "The role of social media sites in educating students during crises". The course was presented by Dr. Mansour Samir Al-Sa`idi on Monday, 22 Rabi` Al-Thani, 1442 A.H.

The course, which was attended by a number of the students of the Joint First Year Deanship. It had several main objectives, most importantly the following:

• Concept of social communication.
• Definition of social media websites.
• Importance of social media websites in education.
• Educational features of social media websites.
• Technologies of social media websites in education during crises.
• Important social media applications in education.
• Features of social media websites in education.

At the outset, the trainer defined the principal objectives of the training course, which are: ‘providing students with the skills of dealing with social media websites in education’, and ‘utilizing these websites to make learning meaningful’. The trainer then highlighted the general objectives of the training course, including the concept of social communication and its sites, importance, the educational features of these sites, and the most important social media applications for education during crises, especially the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The trainer told the trainees that social media is a form of internet communication, as photos, videos, news, articles and voice blogs of the participants are circulated on these websites. This is in addition to the importance of social media websites for education, represented in providing students with the capacity to build social credibility and search for a specific topic on these sites. The trainer also highlighted the most important educational features of social media websites, including: information exchange, discussion, and comments, thus helping students to activate their skills through activity-based learning. Social media websites are also featured with a self-processing technique, following up on new advertisements and the management of projects related to the educational process.

The course concluded by covering the names and features of the most important applications, including: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn learning, Snapchat, and Instagram, which have contributed to education during crises, especially the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.