“On 27th February 2020, suddenly the universities were closed in view of the coronavirus pandemic, putting all the academic activity to an abrupt halt. We along with the world waited for several weeks but the situation only worsened. After about two months it became clear that either we shall venture in the online education like rest of the world or waste our students precious time. We opted for first option. These views were expressed by Vice Chancellor Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU) Dr. Muhammad Ali Shaikh while addressing the press conference on online education at Karachi Press Club on Tuesday. He said, “however, the most important issue in the online education was maintaining the QUALITY of the instructions, as it was a totally new ballgame and required different tools and skills than the conventional education.” He added and said in order to provide quality online education a university should have technical infrastructure including LMS, willingness of the faculty and students to opt for online education, availability of internet, computers or at least smartphones at both the ends i.e. the faculty and students, training of the faculty and students in giving and receiving online education, development of course materials in accordance with the needs of online education etc. We are fortune that SMIU had already invested in the technical infrastructure and had a state of the art LMS already available, Dr. Shaikh said. Regarding willingness of faculty and students for online education, a survey was conducted where 100% faculty and 97% students expressed their willingness to go for online education. Being based in Karachi, our students and faculty had not a big issue regarding availability of Internet. However, some students showed financial difficulties in buying internet facility. The University took several steps to cope up the issues of the students, in genuine cases where students did not afford to purchase online data, university provided them the cost of their internet data package. In case students had no laptop/ computer or even smartphone, university provided them Rs. 20,000/- as loan for purchasing a device. For faculty members it was 50,000/- Dr. Shaikh said apart from this faculty was given three weeks training. Training of students were conducted through videos and tutorials produced by students. While talking about the future plans Dr. Muhammad Ali Shaikh said as SMIU was able to overcome the teething issues associated with the online education, we are contemplating to start a full-fledged long-distance degree programs in select disciplines, in addition to in-person classes.
