OF UNIVERSITIES... REAL AND VIRTUAL Pakistan places its hopes for speeding up IT education in a new 'Virtual University'. Advisor to Islamabad's Ministry of Science and Technology Salman Ansari, who met Frederick Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> at a UNDP/Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, explains what the concept involves.
"IT SIMPLY MEANS this: about two-and-half years ago, we assessed that we were producing about 10,000 graduates in IT (each year). If we were to distil from this, I don't think more than 1000 or 1500 were of very high quality," explains Ansari. Other calculations were revealing too. For Pakistan's own internal needs and software exports, particularly if the latter wanted to touch the ambitious billion-dollar target, the country needed about 40,000 top-of-the-line people. Each could generate export earnings of around 35-40,000 dolalrs, says Ansari. This served as an impetus for revamping higher education, specially that related to IT. Pakistan put in about three billion rupees into existing government-run universities. This money went for building faculty and labs and was primarily focussed on the IT front. "The more we put in, the more we discovered that the weakest link there is the faculty. So we tried to get a number of people. We advertised heavily in (international publications like) the Economist, New York Times and anything would get across the message to (overseas) Pakistanis," says the IT advisor to the Pakistan government. Ansari believes that after 9/11 -- and the response of the US to religious minorities after the World Trade Centre attacks -- expats in the West have started returning home "in a flood", and want to "re-invest in Pakistan as they feel very insecure in the US". But this, still, hardly suffices to cope with current needs. "One way to do so would be to create a very strong distance-learning programme, where we could use common resources -- basically the faculty. We went through the whole exercise of analysis, of meeting people, visiting institutions like the Open University in the UK, and centres of excellence in New Jersey, the University of Illinois (UIUC)," says he. But there were stumbling blocks to implementing this concent. "Number One was cost. Our students would have to pay Rs 70-80,000 per month. This defeats the very purpose. Besides, the course material would not be adequate. It assumes pre-requisites which students in Pakistan simply don't have. For instance, it raises issues of language, pronounciation, the quality of production (most were classroom recordings), and the like," adds Ansari. But one of the most important issues was copyright. "We wanted to use the material in classrooms, host it on the web, broadcast through TV. So the only way we found we could get around this was to generate content ourselves," says Ansari. Thus came the Virtual University. It will involve an initial cost of Rs 200 million (US$1=60 Pakistani rupees). Later, several add-on features will come about. This will include an education Intranet, and a TV educational channel... all costing as much as Rs 1.5 billion. Also planned are studios in different cities, plans to convert content into digital format, creating indexes to allow for asynchornous learning (students can opt for any time when they wish to study), and even digital post-processing to improving the presentation of the material to suitable standards. "Today as we talk (March-end), the first Bachelor of Computer Science programme is being conducted," said Ansari. Initially, only 1000 students are being formally enrolled as part of the pilot project. Once it goes on-line fully, anyone in any part of Pakistan will be able to sign-up for classes. There will be some 28 tutoring centres, all being physical brick-and-motar classes. Teachers will be physically present -- even if not of the same caliber as those working at the apex -- to guide students personally. Students would also be able to 'talk back' to the lecturers via the Internet, possibly getting an instant response too. By September this year, the target is to have some 5000 students. "By end 2003, we should have 25,000 students enrolled in exactly the same format," says Ansari. Behind this plan, there are also other initiatives to open up the Internet in Pakistan. So far, it has reached some 570 locations, and the country has reduced the price of Internet bandwidth, by as much as 75% recently, says Ansari. Multi-metering of phone-calls to the Internet will also be a thing of the past, he is hopeful. "So, theoretically, one could sit 500 miles from the main city and pay Rs 2 for a phone call, and Rs 5 per hour of Internet time. For five hours of lectures, one would pay just Rs 27 (in Internet and connectivity charges)," says Ansari. By December this year, Pakistan hopes that Internet access could reach as many as a thousand sites in the country. Some are of very small capacity, some are larger Class I areas with 2000+ lines, says Ansari. Later on, it is hoped that the Virtual University will shift from just IT education to also Science and general education. By allowing all cable TV licence-holders to carry Internet connectivity too, the access is sought to be enhanced. Besides, cable TV licencees (a segment in South Asia that reaches a far wider population that the total number of computer users) have been mandatorily required to carry at least one educational channel. "So, in one stroke of the pen, six million homes will get an education channel... by force," says Ansari, with a smile. In addition, Internet connectivity is being promised in some 430 post office, some 1800 petrol pumps across Pakistan, and in other community centres. "In three to four years time, we hope to have the Internet reaching 40 million people," says an optimistic Ansari. Other plans are that in five years from now, there will be some level of synchronous and asynchronous education across Pakistan "where-ever you are". In addition, the plan is to have 60 universities connected by fibre by October 2002. Also envisaged is linking back to the Internet-II in the US (the education-oriented version of the Internet), thus enabling for collaborative research and accessing each other's data-bases and content servers. "This is one of the most exciting and one of the most powerful programmes we've worked on so far," says the adviser on IT. (ENDS) FEEDBACK: Mr Ansari can be contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
