Formation of Committees- Executive and Academic

Dr. Ishrat Hussain formed two committees. Executive committee and an academic committee. Not sure what the executive committee will be doing yet, but the academic committee is going to look over the curriculum and subjects being taught and will decide how to make the courses better.

The members for the academic committee are

Dr. Mohammad Nishat -Economics and Finance

Dr Waseem Khan -Centre for Computer Studies

Dr. Mohammdad Iqbal -Management

Mr. Aman U Saiyed -Accounting

Dr. Hamen Das Lohano -Economics and Finance

Ms. Yasmin Zafar -Marketing

Dr. Javed Hussain -Social Sciences

Ms. Tahira Maryam Jafri -Economics and Finance

No idea on how this committee would be functioning but it would really help if this committee could involve people from the industry and current students in the process as well as faculty members from internationally renowned universities.

Like for marketing. We could hold a string of sessions for covering the marketing course. A meeting comprising of Current Teachers, Advertising Agency Heads, Brand Activation Agency Head, Marketing Managers of MNC and Local companies, Media Buying House Heads, Students that have taken these courses and atleast two to five internationally renowned universities faculty members , they can attend using video conferencing.

The agenda to be discussed could involve defining the basics of marketing, knowledge required for each facet of marketing, the best way to include case studies, projects for each marketing course, broad outlines for the contents, identification of marketing resources that could be used, what should be learnt in internships and a mentorship program for the gifted marketing students.

what do you say?

Funnyness between ISM and MIS

its pretty funny when you see the slides which were being used for teaching Information system management , an equivalent course of managerial policy to BBA MIS students in semester seven, being used for teaching management information system to BBA 3 students.

it seems that the teacher Waseem Arian doesnt know how to teach anything, nor does he know how to formulate courses for different level of students. anyone would realize the difference between seven semester students of MIS who know a lot and third semester business students for whom its an introductory course.

His concepts are pretty much screwed up. he usually copies slides from wikipedia and avoids questions.

he’s the most irresponsible teacher i have ever heard of. he comes late to class, isnt presentable(currently sporting a caveman look with dishelved hair), and  takes the most off days. He has no clue about what he teaches so he just jumps over stuff and has a weird staring habit.

Innovation at best

guess what. one teacher finally understood the point of innovation in teaching method. the true spirit of changing the dynamics of course and well gave new life to E-commerce

E-commerce is relatively new to Pakistan in terms of the greater majority accepting it. we do see sites like Lootmaar  coming up and liberty selling books online but the greater majority is still suspicious of shopping online.

Farzal invited the industry to participate in the course online and actually contribute towards making it really big. a review on Greenwhite applauded this attempt.

Apparently not a lot of warm response, but i’d say i am impressed. its an innovative way to get the industry to actually come and build the course, atleast by identifying what needs to be taught.

The new method of teaching

we have been criticizing the teachers for using old methods of teaching. they are implementing a new and innovative method of teaching, “the student recursive teaching method”. The details of this method are pretty dynamic. basically the students teach the students. its believed that this is the most effective method of teaching students. When the instructor and the students’ frequency match, only then can we impart maximum knowledge. So whats a faster way to match the frequency then to have the instructors from among the students.

the method in execution is easy. you point out a basic framework on the chapters that need to be covered. break the class up into groups of two. assign everyone chapters. and tell them to present to the class. at the end of the class, do a nice little wrap up discussion and the chapter is done. you could throw in a little exercise on the chapter and its all pretty much accomplished.

I mean the students are intelligent enough to teach themselves. the concept was iterated in the movie called “Accepted” . if it can happen in a movie it can happen in real life too. right??

MBA’s returning to same boring courses

All the mba’s are returning to the same old boring courses with same teachers and the same course outline with the same old jokes and the same old threats.

Marketing issues in Pakistan has been renamed to Marketing Practices in Pakistan.

Entrepreneurship has been renamed to Entrepreneurial Management

They taking the same communication courses and same economics courses. there is seriously no value addition to the returning MBAs. its about time IBA revises its policy on MBA who are coming from the four years bachelor program or atleast the course

The difference between Administering and Managing an IS

IS stands for information systems. In cavemen terms Computers that handle all information and optimize your business. Someone needs to overlook these systems as you use them in your business, usually called the CIO (chief information officer).

In the start – Management Information Systems Course(MIS), introducing the management information system and other types of systems.

In the middle – Information System Administration Course (ISA), telling you how to administer an information system to a certain extent. It even has a lab attached to it.

Towards the end – Information System Management Course (ISM), telling you how to manage an information system.
Now according to Thesaurus.com administration means management. So does the course add value in any sense, even in the name bit… No, seriously doesn’t. I would list it as one of the courses that had negative value addition. It seems like they ran out of ideas for an MIS course so they just merged two courses, taking the name of MIS , and scrambling it to ISM and taking the course outline of ISA and just going over it roughly. Even the book is called “Management Information Systems”.

Moral of the story: Courses that don’t add value should not be included.