Pak Virtual Education Institution Wins Top Award

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan's Virtual University (VU) has won the Outstanding New Site Award 2012 for an Open CourseWare website which was created last year, according to media reports.

The Awards for OpenCourseWare Excellence provide annual recognition to
outstanding courseware and OpenCourseWare sites created in the OCW Consortium community.
They also recognize individual leadership in moving the ideals of
OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources forward. The awards are
announced each year at the global OpenCourseWare Consortium's annual
conference.

In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched the
world's first open courseware program, which inspired many other
universities, including Pakistan's Virtual University, to join the Open
CourseWare (OCW) movement.


Founded in 2002, Virtual University of Pakistan has so far contributed 138 courses
on a wide range of subjects since joining the OpenCouseWare consortium.
These courses include free and open digital publications of high
quality educational materials for colleges and universities.





Enabling virtual education is the high-speed broadband expansion led by PTCL which has propelled Pakistan to
become the fourth fastest growing broadband market in the world and the
second fastest in Asia, according to a recent industry report.
Serbia leads all countries surveyed with a 68% annual growth rate from
Q1 2010 to Q1 2011. Thailand (67%), Belarus (50%), Pakistan (46%), and
Jordan (44%) follow Serbia. India is in 14th place worldwide with a 35%
annual growth rate.

 The quickest and the most cost-effective way to broaden access to
education at all levels is through online schools, colleges and
universities. Sitting at home in Pakistan, self-motivated learners can
watch classroom lectures at world's top universities including UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford. More Pakistanis can pursue advanced degrees by enrolling and attending the country's Virtual University
that offers instructions to thousands of enrolled students via its
website, video streaming and Youtube and television channels.

The concept of virtual instruction is finding its way to K-12 education as well. Increasing number of Pakistanis are drawn to the Khan Academy channel on YouTube making Pakistanis among its top users. Virtual Education for All is a local Pakistani initiative extending the concept to primary level. 



All of these technological developments and open courseware initiatives
are good news for making education available and accessible to satisfy
the growing needs in Pakistan and other emerging countries around the
world seeking to develop knowledge-based economies of the 21st century.
Virtual University deserves credit for leading this education revolution
in Pakistan.

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Pakistan Virtual University

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[Riaz Haq]

Here's an interesting letter to Financial Times from two Pakistani readers:

....It can, of course, be argued that quality and institution-building will take some time. However, with the initiatives of some of the best American universities, the pace of reform can be quickened. Initiatives such as MIT Open Courseware (OCW), Open Yale Courses (OYC) and EdX now require just an internet connection and a laptop to access this world-class education. The word needs to be spread so that as many people as possible take advantage of this.

What American universities are doing is the beginning of a global reform in higher education. In our recorded history, no civilisation has ever opened its most advanced knowledge for others to benefit. We believe that nothing but the essence of real knowledge can truly transform our country.

It is with this faith that we meet every weekend on the outskirts of Lahore and try to gather as many people as possible to tell them what new opportunities have opened up in the shape of OCW and OYC, and how they can use those to transform themselves and society.

We also help underprivileged students understand the OYC lectures. We believe that these opportunities being offered by world-class universities can truly transform not just Pakistan but every country in the world.

Such initiatives need to be highlighted on broader and bigger forums as they represent far better opportunities than what is being offered by the profit-oriented education providers in Pakistan and other countries.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ed95f842-29d4-11e2-9a46-00144feabdc0...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's PakistanToday on ADB assistance for TeleTaleem online education:

ISLAMABAD - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide a technical assistance (TA) grant of US$ 1.1 million to Pakistan’s TeleTaleem (Pvt.) Limited to boost access to quality education and vocational training in Pakistan using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
“This project will open new vistas of online learning opportunities for students and teachers, currently without access to quality educational and training resources. With a click of a button, students will be able to avail quality educational services regardless of their geographic location. The project will hugely benefit students and teachers, particularly girls in remote parts of the country who seek access to good educational opportunities,” said Philip Erquiaga, Director General of ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department.
Leveraging Pakistan’s fast growing ICT sector, TeleTaleem will provide ICT-assisted advanced learning environment to service basic education and technical education and vocational training (TEVT) segments. The company plans to setup 500 learning centers/points-of-access over the next 5 years, reaching out to 100,000 students and 10,000 teachers across the country.
Werner E. Liepach, ADB’s Country Director for Pakistan, and Asad Karim, Chief Executive Officer of the TeleTaleem (Pvt.) Limited, today signed the TA implementation agreement. This is ADB’s first-ever private-sector led investment in an education project.
Pakistan has made impressive gains over the last decade with spectacular ICT growth through the use of mobile phones, Internet and personal computers in the urban, semi-urban and the rural areas.
TeleTaleem will be using this widespread ICT footprint to deliver exciting and engaging teaching-learning practices and content to students and teachers, with the objective of enhancing student achievement and teacher competency.
ADB’s TA grant will also study gaps, issues and opportunities to expand the use of ICT for education by defining appropriate strategies frameworks and financially self-sustaining development and marketing plans, to achieve large scale adaptation.
ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth and regional integration. Established in 1966, it is owned by 67 members – 48 from the region. In 2011, ADB approvals including cofinancing totaled $21.7 billion.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/11/16/news/profit/1-1m-for-tel...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an excerpt of an ET Op Ed on education in Pakistan:

.. Thomas L Friedman wrote in an article recently, “nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimage higher education than the massive open online course, MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity.” Within one year, the coverage provided by Coursera has increased from 300,000 students taking 38 courses taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities to 2.4 million taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones.

There were reports that Pakistan was already one of the beneficiaries of the exponential development of the MOOC. A story on the 2013 Davos World Economic Forum singled out for special mention the presentation given by Khadija Niazi, a 12-year girl from Lahore, who may not have been the youngest speaker ever at the forum but was certainly captivating. According to this account, “hundreds of the conference’s well-healed attendees listened intently as Ms Niazi described her experience with massive online courses known as MOOC that are spreading around the globe … Her latest enthusiasm is for astrobiology because she is fascinated by UFOs and wants to become a physicist.”

According to another assessment, “enterprising academic institutions have taken the lead in online learning. Harvard and MIT, for instance, worked together to introduce EdX, which offers free online courses from each university. About 753,000 students have enrolled, with India, Brazil, Pakistan and Russia among the top 10 countries from which people are benefitting.” What seems to be happening is that while the government continues to neglect education, a variety of private initiatives are helping to fill some of the gaps that have been left.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/502152/education-problem-has-deep-roots/

[Riaz Haq]

Here's Daily Times on AIOU campuses in Pakistan:

ISLAMABAD: Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has prepared a comprehensive plan to construct its own buildings across the country, especially in the far-flung regions to facilitate students, providing them with “best quality education at their door-step.”

The new buildings will have all possible facilities including video-conferencing system, digital library, computer & science labs and classrooms, this was stated by AIOU vice chancellor, Prof. Dr. Nazir Ahmed Sangi while inaugurating new campus building in Abbottabad on Wednesday. It is the twelfth AIOU academic building constructed during the last three years for providing access to quality education and electronically connecting students with the university’s main academic network.

Prof. Sangi urged philanthropists and the public representatives to help in acquiring suitable land for the construction of the AIOU infrastructure.

“We can start the construction as soon as suitable land is made available on volunteer basis,” he said adding that necessary funding for this purpose could immediately be provided.

He also urged the general public to help the university in establishing open-schooling System in the country.

The AIOU has planned to set-up one hundred thousand open schools in the country within the next five years and for this purpose it will seek services of about ten thousand tutors and trained students to educate the male and female population at the primary and middle level. A reasonable stipend will also be provided for this purpose.

The Open Schooling System inaugurated by President Asif Ali Zardari last week will lay a strong foundation for improving literacy rate in the country and providing excess to quality education across the board.

He announced that AIOU’s study centres would soon start working in Kohat and Batagram. The university’s building for its regional campus in Mianwali has almost been completed, whereas its buildings in Khudabad, Methi in Sindh will also be completed within the next six months.

The university has already acquired free land in Bannu, DI Khan, Lakki Marwat and Mardan where the construction work will start soon. The construction work for the AIOU’s own buildings is also in progress in Lora lia, Noshgi, Mastung, Mandi Bahauddin, Toba Tek Singh, Kalat, Jhang, Gawadar and Sibi for running its study centres.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C05%5C09%5Cstor...

[Riaz Haq]

Here's a critique of current college education:

Colleges and universities are indecisive, slow-moving, and vulnerable to losing their best teachers to the Internet.

That’s the shared view of Google (GOOG) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former Department of State official and until this month a tenured professor at Princeton University. They explored the problems of higher education on Friday in a one-on-one conversation sponsored by the New America Foundation, where Schmidt serves as chairman and Slaughter is the new president.

Colleges have the luxury of thorough, democratic deliberation of issues because “they never actually do anything,” Schmidt said during the event. He cited Princeton, where he graduated in 1976 and once served as trustee, which spent six years deliberating over whether to change its academic calendar—and in the end did nothing. “Don’t get me started on that,” Slaughter laughed.

STORY: Seriously, How Much Did You Learn in College?
Schmidt was more positive about the un-Princeton-like Khan Academy, on whose board he serves. He said the academy, which offers free online video tutorials on dozens of topics, has begun to analyze students’ answers to figure out which questions do the best job of assessing mastery of a topic.

The Google boss also had kind words for EdX, a nonprofit created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that lets students take “interesting, fun, and rigorous courses” for free. Google and EdX announced this week that the tech giant will host a platform called Open EdX in a bid to make it easier for anyone to create online courses. “The fun will start,” Schmidt said, as new ventures smash up against incumbents that resist change.

Slaughter agreed that traditional colleges and universities, with their high fixed costs, are at risk. “They’re going to lose their top talent,” she said. “We can become global teachers. The best people can become free agents.”

BLOG: Wharton Puts First-Year MBA Courses Online for Free
Speaking from the audience, BuzzFeed President Jon Steinberg said he doesn’t think his young children will need to attend college. “I don’t want my kids to go to college unless they desperately want to be scholars.”

That was a bridge too far for Schmidt. He said college “just produces a better adult.” While acknowledging that Google’s college recruits aren’t equipped to contribute immediately, he said, “They are phenomenal employees after the training program.”

Schmidt said entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who pays young people to launch startups instead of studying in college, “is just fundamentally wrong. We want more educated people.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-13/googles-eric-schmid...

[Riaz Haq]

The new trend of online educational assistance to students would soon become a viable alternative to academies which can be found in every nook and corner with a general perception to achieve good grades in examinations.

The idea of attending academies became popular a decade ago and even parents are also of the view that there was no concept of after-school tuition in their student life.

But now, a general perception has developed that a student, without attending academies, cannot get good marks.

Probably, this has been the reason for parents to blindly spend on their children's academies whether tutors are clearing the concepts or not that is usually not the concern but parents simply get satisfied from the fact that their child is getting "extra assistance for studies."

The other fact is that owing to mushrooming of academies, standards of teaching at schools have dropped with no efforts to fix them.

"All this has given rise to academy mafia which has plagued our society. We see tuition centres opening in every other street," Muhammad Iqbal, father of a student, said on Sunday.

He said such centres exploit both parents and students in the name of `quality education' while in reality, all this is a result of lack of `quality education' in schools and colleges.

Rahim Khan, guardian of a 9th class student, informed that the fast growing academy industry is a living proof that teachers are unable to deliver their concepts effectively.

What is even more painful is that many a time teachers deliberately do not clear concepts of their students so that they are left with no choice but to join their academies in the evening.

He termed this situation "very sad" and supported the trend of online education, which, he said, would be a viable alternative to throwing money to support a broken system.

"Our education sector is already bickering in pain. There is a dire need for institutes to come up with solutions to stop this exploitation," he opined.

The first alternative is Sabaq Foundation's website www.sabaq.pk which is an online video tutorial website with free video lectures for Pakistani students. The website provides tutorials for four main science subjects -- Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology for SSC, FSc and O Level students. The best thing about this website is that all tutorials have been prepared and sequenced following the exact syllabus of respective boards Cambridge, Federal, Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan.

Another example is that of Maktab.pk which is quite similar to Sabaq and provides lecture videos for four science subjects for FSc students.

So clearly, there are people who recognize the deficiencies of the current state of affairs and are working to resolve them.

When contacted, an education expert was of the view that non-profit initiatives

like these can be a game changer in society and once enough awareness is created about such free educational resources, students can

surely get rid of hassle and cost of after-school academies.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-296927-Online-help-for-stud...

[Riaz Haq]

#Online #education program launched in 14 #kpk districts of #Pakistan: #Peshawar, #Charsadda, #Swabi, #Nowshera, #Mardan, #Mansehra, #Abbottabad, #Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat at 150 schools 16,000 students. #PTI #ImranKhan 
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/413797-online-education-programme-...

Online education programme - tele-education - has been launched in 14 districts of the province under which the students of grades-4 and 5 would be taught English, mathematics and science subjects online.

For the purpose, 150 schools have been selected where 16,000 students would be imparted education. “Sixty percent of the students taking benefit of the programme are girls,” said Zulfiqar Ahmad, managing director of the Elementary and Secondary Education Foundation (ESEF).

The programme has been jointly launched by ESEF, DFID, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and Tele-education Organisation. It is being launched in Peshawar, Charsadda, Swabi, Nowshera, Mardan, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat.

The official said the computer labs would be established in the schools where the online classes would be arranged. Teachers sitting in Islamabad would deliver online lectures at the schools.

He said the programme had already been launched in some areas of Chitral, Dir and other districts and within a short span of time the interest of the students had increased.

The official said monthly monitoring of the programme is done and the students have shown enough improvement in the subjects they are taught online. He said the curriculum of government schools is taught in the online classes.

The official said in some schools of Chitral and Dir Lower, the project has already been completed and due to the successful results, it has been extended for another two years. The project continued for nine months in different schools in Chitral.

[ZAHRA ZAFAR]

nice one http://www.result.pk/educom/pmc-announces-new-policy-for-foreign-st...