Category: Teaching
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Remembering Feisal Rahimtoola and Conflicting Perspectives
Remembering Feisal Rahimtoola who taught us Principles of Management at IBA, Karachi in 1985 in my first MBA semester. His energetic style of teaching was distinctively unique while pacing from left to right moving from front to back and front, raising questions and answering the questions with good humor, while thinking aloud and exploring all…
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How to Design LMS Based Online Examinations in Asynchronous Mode
In medical universities and engineering universities during the 1980s-90s when cheating and copying culture was rampant, faculty members primarily used to rely on viva examinations for awarding final grades. Vivas and presentations even today during on-site classes are preferred for MS thesis, PhD Thesis, capstone projects, final year projects, clinical, lab practicals, and senior design…
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Using Rubrics to Manage Anxiety Created by LMS Based Online Assignments
Open ended assignments such as case studies, project reports, real life problems that are open book and are take-home types often lead to a mismatch of expectations of the students with that of the faculty members. This mismatch can make students work on Final Assignments for even 10-15 hours, not knowing whether they have met…
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How much time does it take to write an Exam in the LMS Based Online Exam Taken in Asynchronous Mode
How much time does it take to write a 3-hour exam in an LMS Based Online Taken in Asynchronous Mode? My expectation from faculty members is that their question needs to be a 3-hour exam, the “estimated” writing time for the answers should be 3 hours. The exam paper is typically loaded on LMS as…
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Understanding the Four Critical Stages of LMS Technology Assimilation- A Case Study of a Pakistani University
At IoBM, we crashed into the use of LMS at a breakneck speed. However, our assimilation of LMS (Learning Management System) which is just another technology is following the well known critical stages of assimilation of technology [1]. We had started our implementation in Fall 2019 and by the time the lockdown happened we had…
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Faculty Development, Motivation and Retention
Faculty Development and Retention Policy: Role of Faculty in Academic Excellence Report Date: 26 August 2003 Objectives To develop the institute as a Center of Excellence in university level education requires that faculty is motivated to contribute to the: 1. Excellence in teaching standards by actively participating in the development of courses, curriculum and instruction…
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Examples of How Children Fail
In “How Children Fail”, the acclaimed author John Holt describes how children stop using their mind, and fail. It is quite evident from the example pic below that the child was using his mind. Unfortunately, the teacher was grading “mindlessly” from the key that he had. This example is not an isolated case. There are…
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Essential Orientation for Teachers and Faculty Members
Essential Orientation for Faculty Members, Teachers and Facilitators embarking on a journey to understand experiential learning and weaning away from the conventional mode of teaching. In my opinion this is the minimum level of understanding required by teachers of schools and universities.To maximally gain from this material, watch the following videos and read the following blog…
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Dr Muhammad Mahmud of IBA: A Self-made Industrious Faculty Member
Dr M Mahmud expired early morning of July 12, 2018. Inna lillah e wa inna ilaihi rajioon. May Allah reward him with the best of abodes in the hereafter. Aameen. Allah blessed him with 27th Ramazan night to start this journey. He was an alumnus of IBA. His association with IBA started in 1967-68 in…
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Top Ten Reasons Why HEC Abandoned Quality Ranking of Universities
Recent decision of HEC to abandon its quality rankings [1] needs to be welcomed. It was an initiative motivated by hubris with scant regard to societal and industry requirements. It was conceived and designed by those who wanted all the universities to become research universities and clones of each other. It was a whip with…
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Power of Word in Value Based Education: Discriminating Truth from Falsehood
Honorable Prime Minister, Group Chairperson City School, dignitaries, educationists, teachers and my dear students. I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to speak about value based education, some thing that is near and dear to my heart. Power of Word emanates from the depth of our feelings. Words are only words unless they…
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Why I am a Faculty Member
Why I am a faculty member: (1) Meeting a student who graduated a long time ago and who comes over and tries to make me recall him and his batch. Then reminds me of one of my lesson that he remembers to this day and that has changed his life. This is the great fulfilling…
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How to Create Love for Poetry: A Tribute to Sir Ghalib Raza of ICB
Over the last 25 years as I desperately try to connect my students with the joy of reading and poetry, at universities and at schools , I realize the worth of what Sir Ghalib Raza was achieving in my school days. He was making us “feel” the poetry, not “understand” it. Poetry is meant for “feeling”…
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How Schools Teach Students to Hate Reading: Mass Creation of Non-Readers
Schools are producing graduates who know how to read but are not readers. They have become non-readers (functional illiterates) because the schools have taught them to hate reading! Functional Illiteracy Schools typically use a curriculum and methodology that consists of senseless and meaningless worksheets and exercises which the students are forced to do repeatedly, continuously…
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Why Students Avoid and Stop Taking the Course of Some Teachers: 7 Top Reasons
Over the last 37 years in higher education as student (from 1980-94), and as faculty member and academic administrator (since 1995), I have come across scores of instances where students went out of the way to avoid certain teachers, dropped the course en-mass, ganged up to remove the teacher, walked out or simply dropped the…
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Why Educational Experiments are “Doomed” to Succeed?
It is often said that all educational experiments are doomed to succeed [1]. Here is my different take on this from the perspective of an educational reformer and educational leader. There are tons of methodologies, experiments, strategies and their resources that are available to teachers. However, when a teacher designs a new educational experiment, it…
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Abuse of Presentation Slides in Classrooms: Ban Powerpoint Presentations
Problems with Powerpoint Presentations in Classroom A couple of weeks ago I came to deliver a presentation in a seminar after four speakers who were delivering a technical talk to the business owners using powerpoint and speaking in English, which is the second or third language of the speakers and the audience. I could see…
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What Students Expect from their Teachers: Roles and Responsibilities of Teachers
Core of the following talk was presented at 3rd Conference of Deans and Directors of Business Schools organized by NBEAC at PC Lahore, Feb17-18, 2016. The talk was presented during the session Roles and Responsibilities of Business Schools’ Teachers: Perspectives of Students. This talk is based on my experiences of managing the expectations of students…
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Who Fails when a Student Fails
Should not this be true also for schools? Are we willing to take responsibility of the failure of our students? We conveniently try to shift the blame to the student, or to his genetic intelligence, or to his learning disability, or to his psychological deficiency, or to his parents, or to his family, or to his…