IU VC holds videoconference with deans, chairmen
Islamic University Vice-Chancellor Professor Harun-Ur-Rashid Askari held a videoconference with the deans and departmental chairmen of the university to perform academic activities through online as the university was shut for an indefinite period because of the corona virus outbreak in the united states.
The video conference happened on Wednesday afternoon and IU VC Dr. Rashid Askari attended it from his office.
IU Pro VC Professor M Shahinoor Rahman, Treasurer Professor M Selim Toha, Registrar SM Abdul latif, Proctor Professor Paresh Chandra Barman, deans, departmental chairmans joined the web discussion meeting.
IU VC said, " Islamic University teachers are in a state of preparedness to conduct online academic activities in this situation. Indeed many teachers started it on their own towards the end of last month. I hope from next week onward, most of the teachers will take online classes through the virtual platforms open to and suitable for them."
Because so many government schools, educational institutions in the united states and worldwide have shifted to online modes of teaching and learning owing to the lockdown imposed to fight the coronavirus outbreak, the University vice-chancellor Prof Rashid Aska urged IU faculty members to explore ways to engage students using suitable online teaching methods to be able to complete the ongoing courses.
The Vice-Chancellor said, "As you are all aware, we have closed our university and classes have already been suspended for an indefinite period, due to the emergence of coronavirus declared by the federal government. I am sure that you are all making productive make use of your time and effort in research and updating teaching materials. Even when we resume classes, you will see very little time to complete teaching, and conduct examinations and evaluation before the end of the academic year. Under these situations, I request all of you to explore methods to engage our students using suitable online teaching methods so as to complete the ongoing courses. When students return after thus emergence period, we can conduct the end-semester examinations and publish the results on time so that the outgoing students can take up employment or proceed for higher studies."
Vice chancellor point out a few of the well-known online learning methods that can be used. Recorded video lectures may be the easiest and simplest method of online teaching is by using your mobile phone or notebook to record lectures and share it through google drive, e-mail, and WhatsApp or upload in the web site. "I am certain that the majority of our students have a laptop or mobile phones with internet connectivity and therefore I do not foresee any difficulty in access the video lectures," the VC states. He also discusses email groups, WhatsApp discussion groups that can be utilised to talk about reading material, answer queries from students and discuss course work among themselves. He suggests that Skype, the video-calling platform, works extremely well for live lectures.
Besides these simple online ways of teaching, he explains several Learning Management Systems that are often accessible.
Zoom and Google Hangouts Meet- "Both are equally good and also have provision for recording, screen sharing and group messaging. The Zoom basic version is freely downloadable nonetheless it has certain limitations. You can deliver lectures using ppt or handouts and arrange a Q&A session throughout a pre-set time", he added .
Finally, the vice-chancellor concludes by saying “The knowledge from online teaching "can help us to implement the full-fledged Learning Management Systems such as for example Moodle and Google CLASSROOM among others. I also request the heads of the departments to facilitate our faculty members to conduct online teaching."
