Islamabad, /DNA/ – The Higher Education Commission’s National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) and Postsecondary Education Reform Unit (PERU) have been working collaboratively to strengthen teaching in postsecondary educational institutions.

The new HEC Undergraduate Education Policy 2020 (UEP) mandates a number of reforms to better serve undergraduate students. These changes include the revamped BS and Associate Degree (AD) curriculums, the Gen Ed requirement, the practical learning requirements (Internship and Practical Learning Labs such as entrepreneurship, youth clubs, and sports), and a shift to the semester system in affiliated colleges.

In order to prepare faculty and staff of higher education institutions (HEIs) to implement these changes and improve the quality of education available, NAHE and PERU have been working together to train Lead Instructors who will go on to train Master Trainers from affiliating universities. These Master Trainers will, in turn, train faculty from affiliated colleges across Pakistan.

Under the auspices of NAHE and PERU, the training programme of the Lead Instructors was designed, developed, and facilitated by Dr. Shazia Awan (Assistant Professor, LUMS, School of Education), Dr. Arshad Bashir and Mr. Ata ur Rehman (PERU), and conducted in Islamabad at NAHE from January 6-7, 2022.

All the instructors who received training in this two-day workshop are experienced academics and professional development experts who represent multiple higher education institutions from across Pakistan. They were selected from over 147 applications.

The core areas covered included UEP overview, training methodology, curriculum development aligned with the UEP policy, along with robust discussions on timelines, activities, and implementation plan to train Master Trainers from across Pakistan, who will then go onto train about 3000 college faculty from KP and Balochistan in this phase before the trainings are rolled out to the whole country.

Professor Dr Shaheen Sardar Ali, Rector NAHE and Dr Zulfiqar Gilani, Programme Specialist Academics, PERU opened the session on Day-1 of the training. The trainee Instructors were able to participate in extensive question and answer sessions with senior NAHE and PERU team members.

This training is the second of its nature – the first training was held in May 2021 for Master Trainers. At that time, almost 300 college faculty from 90 affiliated colleges in the KP completed the capacity enhancement training through NAHE-PERU joint training programme.