KU bolster efforts to conduct online classes

KARACHI: While the coronavirus lockdown left campuses vacant, the University of Karachi on Wednesday agreed to accelerate the efforts to conduct online classes, a press release stated.

University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr. Khalid Mahmood Iraqi said at a high-level meeting organized at VC Secretariat on Wednesday, “We need to ensure the consistency of the learning method. Seeing the number of university students, we need to make sure everything is in order before we launch online classes”.

According to Dr. Iraqi, the administration does not want any disruption or issue and wants to develop a systematic plan that would encourage and support the students.

Dr. Iraqi, Registrar Professor Dr. Saleem Shahzad, all the deans, Student Advisor Dr. Syed Asim Ali, Professor Dr. Sadiq Ali Khan, Deputy Director of Enhancement Cell Jawaid Akram, attended the meeting. The goal of the meeting was to analyze online learning opportunities and possibilities.

The Learning Management System (LMS) made by Virtual University will be configured to be used by faculty and students for assignments, tests and lecture sharing. The University will integrate the LMS as the online learning platform within two weeks while the QEC will plan tutorial material and videos for widely used online learning platforms such as Zoom, Teams and Adobe Connect and others.

For this purpose, Dr. Iraqi formed a Technical Expert Committee to be supervised by Director QEC Professor Dr. Syed Jamil Hasan Kazmi, while Dr. Ali and MCN Engineer Ishfaque Khanzada, Director Distance Learning System Professor Dr. Abdul Waheed, Student Advisor Dr. Ali, and Deputy Director QEC Akram were named as members of the Committee.

In the next meeting that would take place in the coming week, this committee will present its report. It was found during the meeting that students from rural areas lack internet facility and can experience various difficulties in taking lectures online. The Vice-Chancellor, in consultation with the respective deans, instructed the in charge MCN Dr. Sadiq Ali Khan to prepare standard methods to ease those students.

All the deans were asked to prepare the required criteria and build relations for substantive grass-root compliance with their faculty members and their students.