Virtual University of Pakistan 6.5

The Virtual University is Pakistan's first public sector university based completely on modern Information and Communication Technologies. The University opened its virtual doors in 2002 using television broadcasts and the Internet thereby allowing students to follow its programs regardless of their physical location.

At VU, the top professors of the country, regardless of their institutional affiliations, develop and deliver hand-crafted courses. The University holds a Federal Charter, making its degrees recognized and accepted all over the country as well as overseas. Pakistani students residing overseas in several other countries have also enrolled in the University’s programs.

The University relies on digital media, Internet and free-to-air satellite television broadcasts to impart education. The University has its own four television channels (VTV1, VTV2, VTV3 & VTV4) and students have the liberty to watch their lectures in the comfortable surroundings of their homes which become virtual classrooms of VU or at any of the many VU campuses spread all over the country. These lectures are also available in DVD format and can easily be purchased at a minimal cost from University’s on-line Bookshop (http://bookshop.vu.edu.pk).

The lecture videos are also available on the globally popular YouTube site http://www.youtube.com/vu. Over 6000 video lectures on YouTube make it one of the largest contributions by any university to the Open Education Resources (OER) movement. VU has now published all courses on its open courseware site (http://ocw.vu.edu.pk), and thereby joined the ranks with top universities of the world. VU’s open courseware website has been ranked as the best new open courseware website for the year 2012 by the international OCW Consortium.

The students and teachers use the Internet to interact with each other. For this purpose the Virtual University has developed an online Learning Management System (LMS) through which the students have 24/7 access to reading material, lecture videos and notes and prescribed texts. The LMS is also used to hand out assignments to students and hold pop quizzes and practice tests. This innovative and unique mechanism for the delivery of education adopted by VU offers a high degree of flexibility to students who may view the lectures at a time of their choice.