E-Learning leaps ahead with US partnership

The Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has launched a cooperative partnership with the San Jose State University (SJSU), America. The three-year agreement signed on Monday is expected to increase access to online learning for students throughout Pakistan.
“Online learning would open university doors to thousands of Pakistanis,” said US Embassy Public Affairs Officer Kathryn Schalow, who had joined AIOU Vice Chancellor Dr Nazir Ahmed Sangi and SJSU representatives in an official launch ceremony. Schalow emphasised the importance of university partnerships in US-Pakistan relationship, “People-to-people relationships, like those forged here today, are crucial to broaden and deepen bonds between people of our nations,” she added.
The partnership would improve distance education for students in both universities by improving teaching methods, updating the curriculum, conducting joint research, and providing faculty exchange.
This is the sixth of eight planned university partnerships between the US and Pakistani universities. Five other university partnerships had been established in 2012, including partnerships between the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University and the University of Texas at Austin, the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) and the University of North Texas, Quaid-i-Azam University and Ball State University, the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women’s University and Southern Methodist University, Iqra University and Ball State University. The United States has decided to invest $8.6 million over the next three years on partnerships that focus on a range of liberal arts subjects including American Studies, Business Administration and Management Sciences, Mass Communications and Media Studies, Psychology, Social Anthropology, and Women’s and Gender Studies.
These partnerships are part of a broad base American effort to connect Pakistani and American universities, which includes Centres for Advanced Studies in all leading universities in Pakistan on critical areas of energy, water, and agriculture. More than 12,000 poor students have been able attend college in Pakistan with the support of US-funded scholarships.