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?

FACULTY EVALUATION

LET ME REMIND PEOPLE OVER HERE. THE FACULTY EVALUATION IS TO STATE WHAT HAPPENS IN CLASS, HOW CAN THE TEACHER DO A BETTER JOB AND WHAT IS THE TEACHER DOING WRONG. THIS IS BY NO MEANS A PLACE TO INSULT THE TEACHER. KINDLY REFRAIN FROM SUCH REMARKS IN THE FACULTY EVALUATION.

ITS SUPPOSED TO BE A SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION OF THE TEACHER TO WORK IN COHERENCE WITH THE OBJECTIVE NUMBER GRADING THAT THE STUDENTS DONT TAKE SERIOUSLY.

USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. PRAISE TEACHERS WHO ACTUALLY ARE INTERESTED IN TEACHING YOU AND ARE NOT JUST READING OUT OF A BOOK. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU CAN DO THAT ON YOUR OWN. A TEACHER IS SUPPOSED TO TEACH YOU BEYOND THE BOOK. THE BOOK IS JUST A REFERENCE TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND CONCEPTS.

The record for the fastest paper

This mid-term Amir Rizvi is the proud holder for hosting the fastest paper first. He occupies the first with two entries namely Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management, both MIS electives. the papers reported ended on average within fifteen minutes, with a few outliers here and there.

The second place goes to Ahmed Ali Shah for Calculus, whose paper reportedly finished in half an hour, with the tinkering and checking taking max time to an hour.

Congratulations to both! We are very proud of you

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??

The problem with PhD-student-teachers’ projects

the problem with PhD. student-teachers is that they think projects can nothing be less than research papers. that the world revolves around research papers and if you have to give a project it has to be of the same level as PhDs have. i get the part where we learn a lot while doing a huge project or read the otherwise never touched research articles but am pretty sure that there is something called too mature projects given too immature minds leading to them learning nothing and just wasting a good project opportunity phenomenon[1] . The point is that when someone is not a PhD the point of trying to understand a very specific phenomenon really leads to nowhere. projects should be more substantial in adding to the understanding of the student rather than just a forced review of a paper which is remotely related to the topic.

Instead to ensure that the students are reading research papers,  a more better approach would be to make research papers available electronically to them and to allow them the liberty of choosing a topic which interests them and a bit of pushing towards the writing of the paper for entry into some conference.  in fact, a much better , academic oriented approach leading towards better understanding of the students mind.

REFERENCES:

[1] Li Peng Shui and Shing Zong Tsu, The Peng Zong Effect and its ripple effects,  University of BS, ISACA paper 2005 pp.44-49

Associate Professors, Professors and Scholarships from the States

Ms. Huma Naz is Associate professor now.

Dr. Mehnaz Fatima is Professor now.

and Shahid Raza Mir will be leaving for USA cause he won the Starbright 2008 scholarship

i wonder who ll replace him as the Student counselor.

THE PRETTILY BIASED FACULTY EVALUATION

Are you watching closely? [ever watched “The Prestige”]

 

1.  Poor     2. Satisfactory     3. Good     4.Very Good     5.Excellent

 

 

 

 

For those who cant pick the magic trick. There is one bad remark and four good ones to grade the teacher on.

I mean, any one who has taken an MBR course and had their eyes open during the faculty evaluation can tell you that the form is pretty heavily ultra biased in favor of the teacher.

The theory behind this evaluation is pretty simple. The students will fill the form using 1-5 as their criteria, not actually looking at what 1-5 actually means. Let’s just call this the student-deception-perception theory

 

If we were to actually decode how the students actually grade the teachers it would be like

 

5 for an exceptional teacher they really like who either knows the subject very well, maintains interest or is ultra lenient

4 for a teacher they think is jus good

3 for a teacher they think is normal

2 for someone who is letting them pass

1 for someone they hate or someone who doesn’t know how to teach