Amid COVID-19 pandemic, on-campus activities have come to a grinding halt, but the good news is that Karachi University (KU) is going for online education. KU is gearing itself to conduct online classes and undertaking the task of delivering knowledge to students’ doorstep.
A meeting was held to conduct online classes at Karachi University’s Vice-Chancellor (VC) Secretariat. “We need to ensure that the learning process continues. Given the number of students at the University of Karachi, we need to make sure that our house is well organized before we start online education. We do not want to go for any mishap in this regard,” said KU VC Prof Dr. Khalid Mahmood Iraqi at the meeting.
“What we need is a well-thought-out plan to enable each and every student to learn and meet the course learning goals.” The meeting was also attended by KU Registrar Prof Dr. Saleem Shahzad, all the deans, Students’ Adviser Dr. Syed Asim Ali, Main Communication Network Incharge Prof Dr. Sadiq Ali Khan and Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) Deputy Director Jawaid Akram. The agenda was to discuss possibilities and opportunities regarding online education.
In the first phase of online learning, KU would ensure that its teachers are well trained in using online platforms and video conferencing software for taking online classes. The Learning Management System (LMS), which has been made accessible by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan through the Virtual University, will be composed to be used by the teachers and students of KU for assignments, assessments and sharing lectures.
The meeting decided that KU would integrate the LMS as the online education platform within two weeks while the varsity’s QEC would prepare tutorial content and videos for general use online learning tools like Zoom, Adobe Connect and others.
The KU VC made a technical experts committee which would be supervised by QEC Director Prof Dr. Syed Jamil Hasan Kazmi. The committee would submit its report in the next meeting. It was also discussed in the meeting that students from remote areas had no access to the internet and they may face various difficulties in taking online lectures. One of the members observed that this step would facilitate distance learning among the students.