Refresher Courses for Statistics Teachers of Colleges affiliated with Quaid-i-Azam University

College Teacher Training (CTT) is a crucial component of the education system and it plays a pivotal role in the quality improvement and strengthening of the education system. Teaching and learning goes hand in hand, which makes it necessary for the educational institutions to have teacher training modules which are well knit in the curriculum.

Islamabad colleges affiliated with Quaid-i-Azam university (QAU) started BS/ associate degree programs without sufficient training. The college faculty does not have a guidance about the objective of BS/associate degree programs and most programs are run as per previous practices, whereas the main aim of the BS/associate programs is to prepare the young generation for the 21st century challenges. Furthermore, teachers in colleges usually join the teaching profession without any formal training in teaching methodology, learning psychology and classroom management. They develop teaching skills out of their own experiences or from experiences shared by colleagues in the course of their teaching career.

Since QAU is Oxford in Pakistan, keeping in mind this social responsibility to strengthen the faculty of Islamabad colleges in terms of capacity building, the department of statistics QAU with the cooperation of offices of research, innovation and commercialization (ORIC), quaidian statistical society (QSS), and directorate of quality enhancement of affiliated colleges organized 08 days refresher courses for colleges affiliated with the university. The closing ceremony was chaired by the worthy vice chancellor Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ali (T.I.) and distributed the certificates among participants and trainers. The worthy vice chancellor appreciated the efforts of statistics department to improve the teaching skills of the faculty at Islamabad colleges. He emphasized the importance of statistics in research and encouraged participants to be trainers of the skills they have learnt from the refresher courses. This would help other faculty members to learn new emerging methods of new pedagogical skills and enable them to learn new research methods to be applied in conjunction with theoretical understanding of the subjects being taught. The worthy vice chancellor also encouraged other departments of the varsity to follow the tradition of statistics department.