BY DR. RAZIA FAKIR MOHAMMAD
Soon after COVID-19 became a pandemic, academic procedures came to a momentary standstill.
As the whole world struggled to adapt to the stressful living conditions in the wake of the Pandemic, academic institutions around the globe have been striving to remain functional and at the same time they are finding ways to prevent the spread of the life-threatening virus.
Hence, an unforeseen reliance on technology for continuing education was witnessed in all the developed and under-developed, countries across the world. Likewise, Iqra University being amongst the most popular private-sector universities in Pakistan, took commendable measures towards the continuation of the teaching and learning process.
Iqra has always been a highly dynamic and flexible organization which continuously strives to align itself with the ever-changing environmental and academic demands. In early 2018, the entire curriculum was revamped to meet the holistic needs of the modern student.
Iqra shifted from a very specific disciplinary curriculum to a more broad-based education in order to develop its students in various vistas. Therefore, 12 common core subjects were introduced for all the programs irrespective of their specific nature.
Courses like Critical Thinking, World History, Ethics and Social Responsibility are a few examples. These courses stimulate creativity, intellectual curiosity and honest enquiry among the students and help them learn to place professional judgements in an ethical framework.
Besides this, eight common options were introduced across the disciplines which included courses like Photography, Introduction to Fashion etc. The new curriculum was highly appreciated by all the stakeholders and very soon its impact was visible, pitching Iqra a step ahead of the contemporary educational institutions.
Iqra had already developed its online Learning Management System indigenously, which was in place much before COVID-19. Although the classes were conducted face to face, this LMS was being used for providing content, and reference material, and also for conducting the assessments.
Before COVID-19, we were focusing on summative assessment, but to keep the assessment in alignment with the requirements of online education, the aforementioned practice was reversed to allocate more weightage to formative assessment. To tune in with the online learning modalities, the course outlines were tweaked to accommodate for the limitations of online teaching.
The next step was to re-develop a technologically supportable and deliverable content. Team teaching was introduced to broaden the horizon of online teaching and to expose students to varied teaching styles. Using intelligent strategies, all assessments, including the final exams, were conducted online..
In line with its continuous pursuit of excellence, Iqra is now all prepared to deploy the well-known Blackboard Learning System. The Blackboard will be used for the Fall semester starting from 11th October 2020. All the faculty members have already received extensive training to use the Blackboard. Moreover, the students have also been familiarized to use it.
In the short period of only six to eight months, Iqra has phenomenally transformed its methodology to reach technological competence, acknowledging it as the only solution to the obstacles posed by the pandemic.
We are comfortably positioned now to continue the process of teaching and learning and engaging students in academic pursuits effectively, without further loss of students’ precious time.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor and Head, Research and Policy Studies, AKU-IED. She can be reached at razia.fakirmohammad@aku.edu)
Also Read: Iqra University partners with “Blackboard Learn”
