As the on-campus activities have come to a grinding halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Karachi (KU), the largest varsity of Pakistan, is also gearing itself to conduct online classes.
A meeting was held in this regard on Wednesday at the KU 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 in order before we start online classes. We do not want to go for any misadventure in this regard,” said KU VC Prof Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi at the meeting.
“What we need is a well-thought-out strategy to enable each and every student to learn and meet the course learning objectives.” 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 the online education.
In the first phase of online and blended learning, KU would ensure that its teachers are trained in using online learning platforms and video conferencing software for conducting classes. The Learning Management System (LMS), which has been made available by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan through the Virtual University, will be configured to be used by the teachers and students of KU for assignments, assessments and sharing lectures.
The meeting decided that KU would incorporate the LMS as the online learning platform within two weeks while the varsity’s QEC would prepare tutorial content and videos for commonly used online learning tools like Zoom, Adobe Connect and others.
The KU VC formed a technical experts committee which would be supervised by QEC Director Prof Dr Syed Jamil Hasan Kamzi. 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.