ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: The Higher Education Commission’s Departmental Development Working Party has approved a project worth Rs30 million for women campus of the International Islamic University (IIU).

The project, “Provision of Computing & Faculty Facility”, will enhance the E-learning infrastructure with the establishment of state-of-the-art IT labs for the faculties of applied and management sciences on the women campus, an official statement said.

The project aims at producing skilled workforce in the fields of engineering, information technology and bio-informatics from among the women population of the country.

It will not only provide quality education to the students of certificate, diploma, bachelors and masters programmes in IT and computer science, but also improve higher education among women by raising their professional skills.

The IIU is a unique institution of higher learning, which integrates the parallel streams of religious and secular education systems prevailing in the Islamic world.

Currently, the university consists of six faculties: Shariah and Law, Usuluddin, Arabic, School of Economics, Management Sciences, and Applied Sciences. Apart from these faculties, the university has institutes and academies to conduct research.

AJK varsity e-learning plan: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) will develop basic infrastructure of e-education and e-offices at the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, which include local and wide area networks (LAN/WAN).

The facility would be used in all the departments of the university for inter-office communication.

The project costing about Rs30 million was approved at a meeting of Departmental Development Working Party (DDWP) recently.

The main objective of the project is to automate the teaching institutes, departments, libraries (both central and at sub-campuses), laboratories and routine work of the administrative offices of the university.

Under the scheme, LAN/WAN implementation and customized database designing would be done.

The scheme would also introduce information and communication technology in areas like internal communications, finance and budgeting, procurement and human resource management.

The university would, gradually, replace its physical filing system to computer-based system through the project.

Online services would be provided to the university through a web portal.

A complete website would also be constructed at the university, through the scheme, which will contain commonly required information for students, teachers, and general public about its education policies, academic activities, academic calendar, schedule of admissions, rules and regulations, scholarships, faculty research projects, publications news and press releases and all official forms required by the students.