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Pakistan
MOOCS AND MATHEMATICS IN PAKISTAN
By Imran Parvez Khan Posted in Volume 05 Issue 05 | Comments
(5)
Distance education has been around for quite some time, but its
inefficacy was soon realized.
Internet brought with it some rays of hope as an immense amount
of knowledge became widely
available. Despite the fact that it was freely accessible, it
was not organized. Today we are
witnessing a revolution in e-learning with the introduction of
MOOC (massive open online course).
Because MOOCs are not only massive and open, but are also
organized and structured, and aim to
transfer knowledge with minimum of pre-requisites. MOOCs are
ideally beneficial for countries
where education standards are not up to the mark. Knowledge
sharing has become a reality with
MOOCs.
I work at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (Virtual
Campus) or VCOMSATS for short.
This is a distance-learning environment based on MOOCs. Most of
our students are from Pakistan.
In this article, I would describe some aspects in which MOOCs
have affected Mathematics
education in Pakistan.
Firstly, it is so heartening to see that students from remote
areas are now able to pursue studies
due to MOOCs. It was their birth right that they were deprived
of. After all, in todays global
village, it should not take a Hardy to recognize the Ramanujan.
Here at VCOMSATS we talk to
students on weekly basis and we witness that often students of
backward areas display an
extraordinary understanding of Mathematics. Talent and
intellectual ability is regardless of
geography.
Secondly, a minor but nevertheless worthy change is that
VCOMSATS has initiated a tradition of
providing course notes to the students, which was hitherto not
so common in Pakistan. Within the
span of a single semester we have prepared course notes written
by local teachers for about 10
courses ranging from Calculus to Differential Geometry. The
notes are detailed, with various
examples and illustrations. This is an unprecedented step in the
history of Mathematics teaching in
Pakistan.
As mentioned in the beginning that Internet brought with it a
hope of unified knowledge. It is
now fully realized with the advent of MOOCs. Nowadays teachers
frequently refer to web resources
for further study, and it is remarkable that students all around
the globe refer to same or similar
web resources, regardless of their institution. This has enabled
students to discuss topics of interest
on equal footing with students of any institution. With
platforms like Coursera (globally) and
VCOMSATS (locally), online educations is no more an informal
education method. Students of
MOOCs are being provided high quality education and for
Mathematics, the ground is rather more
fertile than the other sciences.
For experimental sciences, MOOCs are not the ideal platform
while for Mathematics they are,
because the strength of Mathematics lies in its independence
from material sources. To do
Mathematics, all you need is a paper and a pen, and you can set
the world on fire with your sheer
ideas. To quote one instance, Physicists all over the world
celebrated the year 2005 as the Year of
Physics, because 100 years from then, in 1905, Einstein
presented the idea of Relativity. What
was that idea? It was a set of equations on relative motion
which shook our understanding of space
and time.
The future of Mathematics education along with MOOCs is very
bright. With the advent of email
collaborations, it is no more an impossibility to teach subjects
like String Theory or Algebraic
Geometry online. Most importantly, the confidence students
attain by doing self study via online
resources is priceless. With more mathematics MOOCs, they can
learn new subjects and advance
their knowledge. They can bring variety to their research by
incorporating branches of
specialization which are yet not taught in their local
university.
For parting words, I have to say that each year many talented
students face rejections from
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MOOCs and Mathematics in Pakistan
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