ISLAMABAD – Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) will be the first institute having latest technology of 250 video conferencing sets within three years to ensure access of each and every child toward quality education.
This was revealed by Vice Chancellor AIOU, Dr Nazir A Sangi during an interview with APP on Sunday. Dr Sangi said “AIOU is the only university which is presently utilising latest equipment of 25 video conferencing sets to provide the students best knowledge facilities while the other universities have one such set. The university has set a target to increase this number of video conferencing sets up to 250 during the next three years”.
The services of an international level teacher can be utilised for the students of far-flung areas like Umer Kot and DG Khan through video conferencing system, he added. About the new projects, Dr Sangi said the university is working on a project Rural Internet Support Programme (RISE) with the support of SUPARCO and National Education Foundation (NEF) under which study centres will be established at district level for educating the children from Grade 1 to 10.
The pilot project will be launched at two districts Umer Kot and Dassu where students will be provided education through Internet, installing computers facility there, he said.
The university will conduct survey to know the literacy rate of different districts and decide to establish study centre at different districts according to the requirement, he added. AIOU being a largest distance learning institute of Asia is extending its network toward far-flung areas and setting up its regional campuses at Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalpur, Mianwali, Larkana, Hederabad, Skardu, Kohat, Kalat and other areas, Dr Sangi informed. Presently 36 regional campuses of the university are operating across the countryand the number will increase up to 50 in the next three years. All its regional campuses are equipped with the facilities of multi-purpose projectors, computer labs and libraries, he added.
The university has initiated a project with the support of an NGO Plan International to provide education to the women of rural areas free of cost. Plan International has given an amount of Rs 8.4 million to AIOU for implementing this project. About teachers training, Dr Sangi said this year, AIOU will train 30,000 tutors among which 2,000 Master trainers will be trained with the support of Intel Pakistan and then they will train the rest of 28,000 tutors.
AIOU has also implemented a novel idea of setting up Centre for Instructional Design (CID) to provide education to the students while sitting at their homes through Electronic Course Ware. CID has completed its work on compulsory subjects at Matric, Intermediate and Graduation level and the students will now get CDs of study material along with books, he said. The university is introducing the concept of three years associate degree with a cluster of skill development disciplines to ensure job-oriented studies for young generation.
Due to the dynamic steps of AIOU Management and the facilities provided by the varsity for distance learning, a large number of students have shown their interests in different programmes, raising the enrollment 1.2 million annually.
The One Window operation at main campus is facilitating students providing information about admission, examination, results and other queries. While the complaint cell is also being set up which forward the complaints of students to concerned departments and take immediate action to redress their grievances.
AIOU is also working to execute a plan to establish overseas campuses of the university, to facilitate overseas Pakistanis. The campuses would be established in United Kingdom and Middle East in near future.