A Symposium on ‘Open Education in Pakistan’ Held in KICS UET Lahore

A Symposium on ‘Open Education in Pakistan’ was held in Seminar Hall at KICS (Al-Khawarazmi Institute of Computer Science), UET Lahore on 12^th March, 2019. It was organized with close collaboration between KICE UET Lahore and Mechatronics. The intention to conduct this mammoth symposium was to extend the awareness and usefulness of open systems to all the knowledge workers, faculty members, students and researchers. A good participation was witnessed at the occasion and everyone took deep interest in this unique event.

This symposium was arranged under the umbrella of Open Education Consortium that conducts programs of this ilk across the globe. This organization has been advocating open systems for the last three years. This year it is celebrating Open Education Week 2019 by organizing a symposium on Open Systems.

The event was laced with presentations on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Pakistan, Open Access (OA), Open Educational Resources (OERs), Open Textbooks to MOOCs and Engineering. The speakers who delivered talks on these topics included Dr. Sajid Iqbal (Department of Mechatronics & Control Engineering), Ms. Maliha Bukhsi (Department of Mechatronics & Control Engineering), Dr. Ammad Hassan Khan (Department of Transportation Engineering), Dr. Ammad Hassan Khan (Department of Transportation Engineering) and Dr. Ijaz Miraj (National Library of Engineering Sciences).

Prof. Dr. Waqar Mahmood (Director KICS UET) delivered a presentation on ‘MOOCs in Pakistan’. He emphasized on the importance of this new trend which has been accepted largely around the world. Millions and millions of students have turned towards it by enrolling themselves into horde of programs being offered by the famous universities in the world. Dr. Waqar then talked about the platforms offering MOOCs by universities such as Coursera, Udemy and many others.

The event winded up with the distribution of the shields among the speakers.