ISLAMABAD, APR 12 (DNA) – The National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) has awarded 300 eligible Fellows of HEC’s Interim Placement of Fresh PhDs (IPFP) programme, who applied for Start-Up Research Grant Programme (SRGP) from different academic backgrounds ranging from Social Sciences to Life Sciences across all provinces in Pakistan, a grant of up to PKR 1,000,000 each.

SRGP is designed to assist the fresh PhD holders who are IPFP Fellows, to establish research facilities upon joining higher education institutions as faculty members. The programme enables the newly appointed PhD faculty to plan the setup of basic research infrastructure to start research activities without delay. The programme helps to engage both the faculty and students in research through provision of financial assistance and basic lab/experimental facilities.

Given the academic and regional diversity of successful SRGP applicants, NAHE designed and delivered a two-week online capability building programme (15 hours) that served as refresher in fundamentals of project management for IPFP fellows, most of whom will be leading a project for the very first time.

The course introduced the concept and six core elements of project management, challenges encountered in undertaking project management, concept of the Work Breakdown Structure, and the application of project management and the Work Breakdown Structure techniques to academic research (and other) projects.

This 15-hour course was delivered as a goodwill gesture by an internationally recognized team of instructors from Oxon Global (OxG) who are industry experts in Portfolio, Programme and Project Management, OxG is a USA based consultancy firm with an international reach.  

All instructors hold the MSc Major Programme Management from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK. The team has a combined experience of over 90 projects which they delivered internationally at various client sites.  Oxon Global (OxG) partners joined from different time zones and multiple locations including London, Hawaii and Seattle offices to deliver the course.

To improve and sustain the quality control in this course, NAHE conducted an objective and independent online evaluation of the course that was completed by 257 participants. 90% of the participants ranked the delivery of instructors at 80% and above. Evaluations also measured the effectiveness of course content on delivering all 5 learning outcomes (LO), and results showed that at least 75% of the participants ranked the content of each LO at 80% and above.

The course was completed by 262 participants on April 3, 2021 who were required to develop a project plan and work breakdown structure for their own research projects and successfully complete an assessment test to qualify for micro-credential certification by NAHE.=DNA

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