DR ASIF KHURSHID
THE start of this millennium emerged as one the most challenging era as the world was hit by an incident which is known as 9/11 where USA was hit by terrorist attacks. It has been said by many that history of the world will be classified into two eras: one will address pre 9/11 and second one will be post 9/11. Despite severe global recession in the start of this millennium many companies emerge and align themselves as per requirement of the Digital Age. Like Apple introduced IPOD, then IPHONE and then IPAD which changes the digital devices by pushing societies to start using the new world of exposure by adopting mentioned devices. Medical tourism, aviation industry, online shopping, retailing, cargo services etc entered a new phenomenon and give the providers, users, consultants rather all stakeholders a wonderful acquaintance. This exponential growth, development and innovation in a variety of sectors pushed universities to start thinking out of the box so they can realize the fast-changing skill sets of prospering industries across the globe. Educational institutions cannot hold them outside this race, so they have to develop courses by keeping in mind the requirements of industries and changes in the trends across the industries.
Although distant learning initiated in late 1800s when University of Chicago started their correspondence program where teachers and students are at distant locations. The distant learning concept kept on improving and is well aligned with technological advancements till the time online education has been fully capitalized by introducing the concept of MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The roots of MOOC was first coined by a course initiated by Stephen Downes and George Siemens entitled Connectivism and Connectivity Knowledge in 2008. Their main aim was to address and approach the wide variety of audience, which was later on adopted by many educators, experts, instructors even universities started it proactively. Multiple platforms have been developed to enrich the mentioned experience like video lectures, webinars, interactive sessions, chat platforms and many other interesting and attractive technological tools.
This kind of training, education and instruction help many individuals to enhance their skills and be competitive with the job markets. Simultaneously, corporate world realize that tech savvy people are beyond borders and can significantly improve their operations, sales, profit and they can make more money by satisfying plenty of customers across the globe. Organizations take good benefit of this bombardment of skill enhancement tools by establishing plenty of freelancing platforms. They start publishing the parts of their project online and be able to do it by involving people across the globe and in more competitive price in limited time. The mentioned strategy starts working and well communicate the audience that skills has no borders and one can make things done while using and performing online.
But the mentioned scope is still to be marketed, projected, taught and implemented in Pakistan. While having experience of teaching at university level since last twenty years, I have realized that most of the times our youngsters got stuck in their lives due to some discouraging feedback from their colleagues, teachers, parents, siblings, cousins or may be any other society stakeholders. The barrier in their minds do not allow them to think out of the box and they fail to capitalize their potential. At times the strong influence of the parents with traditional and conservative approach they are reluctant to allow their descendants to be creative and do something other than their mentioned routine. But simultaneously its amazing to see few of the students who are coming from a very humble background and do their best by learning and capitalizing the recent technological advancements. They remain open to variety of opportunities and always love and curious to learn lot of new things.
The Corona makes things difficult for the whole world and a consensus has been developed to start working from home whether teachers or people from corporate sectors or all the celebrities from entertainment or social activist as well as many from all walks of life. It’s been amazing to see the contribution by many who start leading the society from the front and using social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc to inspire their followers. I strongly believe that this is the time when people from corporate sector, public sector as well as from all professions should need to review past ten years and have to see that to what extent they have contributed towards their skills set. They should give a thought that they might not be in that filed which is going to be redundant and obsolete once world is out of COVID-19 and even if they are in that profession which will progress exponentially I suggest them to go for second profession as hobby or may be kind of a part time job. The world is going to be different once they overcome this epidemic and will realign itself by keeping in view of new challenges and emerging opportunities. So better to be proactive by attending variety of webinars, MOOCs, and even plenty of opportunities created at national level.
—The writer is a Professor at Bahria University, Islamabad.
