Islamabad - Aimed at keeping university teachers abreast with current trends, a professional development workshop for faculty members of Balochistan Universities started here yesterday.
The workshop is being organised by Inter-University Consortium for Promotion of Social Sciences (IUCPSS) and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) in support with National Testing Service (NTS) Pakistan and government of Balochistan.  
The main objective of this master trainer workshop includes keeping the university teachers abreast with current trends in knowledge disseminating in areas such as curriculum development, assessment and evaluation, microteaching and research methodology, academic writing, classroom management, communication and presentation skills. The workshop will continue till September.  About 22 faculty members belonging to six universities of Balochistan are attending the workshop.
Speaking on the occasion, Advisor on Education to Chief Minister Balochistan, Sardar Muhammad Raza Barrech said that such steps would be greatly helpful for improving quality of teaching and research in the higher education sector of the province.
He believed that faculty of the province would benefit from these initiatives and share the knowledge. He further said that services and contribution of NTS for administering tests in far flung areas of Balochistan were really commendable which helped government of Balochistan a lot in merit based appointments in education and health sectors of the province.  
Dr Nasser Ali Khan, the chairman IUCPSS and vice-chancellor of University of Haripur, underlined the importance of continuous faculty development programs especially for the universities situated in far-flung areas of the country.
Rector CIIT Dr SM Junaid Zaidi assured the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology would continue supporting the initiatives aiming at strengthening higher education in Balochistan. He highlighted various programs and efforts for promoting quality research and teaching in higher education sector of Pakistan.
Muhammad Murtaza Noor, national coordinator IUCPSS, shared the objectives and rationale of the workshop.