GCU switching to virtual teaching

LAHORE: In the wake of Coronavirus outbreak, all the academic departments of Government College University (GCU) Lahore have been fast switching to virtual teaching for the students of all degree programmes.

GCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi has directed the chairpersons of the departments to maintain the record of all online classes, digital handouts and recorded audio and video lectures besides ensuring necessary training and facilitation of faculty members by the newly formed Directorate of IT.

Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi also formed a WhatsApp group with all chairpersons and faculty deans to monitor regularly the progress of virtual teaching. Prof Zaidi said that the unusual situation due to COVID-19 posed additional challenges to all communities and they needed to adapt extraordinary innovative ways to tackle the challenges. He said that most departments of GCU including History, Physical Education, Botany, Environmental Science, Urdu, Sociology, Political Science, Commerce and Finance and English, had switched to virtual teaching while some of the departments like Physics Department were in process of virtual teaching.

He said that besides GCU’s Learning Management System (GCU-LMS), the departments were using different pre-existing readily available Android/IOS/Windows applications, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Classroom, Instagram live, email, WhatsApp groups, recorded lectures and others for virtual teaching.