The Virtual University of Pakistan participated in HEC's Higher Education Development Programme (HEDP) consortium at LUMS to identify high-quality asynchronous online courses as part of the new undergraduate core curriculum for the country.

The purpose of offering nationwide online courses is to ensure all students across the country have access to the highest quality of foundational education. PakistanEdX has been selected as a formal name for this national platform. 

This program will help increase access to quality education and make it available for far-flung areas of Pakistan, particularly important for provinces like Balochistan, interior Sindh, new districts of KP, and far-Punjab.

The new curriculum adds 11 core courses drawn from five broad categories of HEC Undergraduate policy courses.

The participated universities will contribute courses on PakistanEdX by offering multilingual options in these five categories of Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Quantitative Skills, Natural Sciences, and Expository Writing.

Discussions were led by Dr. Shaista Sohail, Executive Director, HEC, and Ms. Maryam Riaz, Project Coordinator, HEDP.

“HEC aims to create a holistic vision of quality culture for online and blended learning,” said Ms. Riaz. 

Prof. Dr. Arshad Saleem Bhatti, Rector, Virtual University commented, “We are standing at a junction where the future of education in Pakistan is being decided.”

“The global offerings of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have skyrocketed demonstrating that online courses do not replace in-person instruction but rather provide complimentary choices to learn anytime, anywhere,” said Dr. Arshad Ahmad, VC, LUMS.

The consortium will meet on a regular basis to drive this project forward, invite other universities and work together to train faculty members across Pakistan to develop these courses.