My Teaching

I am a new-comer to the teaching profession, having had the pleasure of being acquainted to it first when I joined the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad campus, in March 2005 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Sciences.

I am certainly no stranger to academia, having being enrolled in two German universities from where I earned my Diplom in Business Administration in 1990 and in May 2004 my PhD in Public Administration. The transition from student to teacher was remarkably smooth in my case, as a matter of fact, it proceeded with far fewer hiccups than I had anticipated.

Teaching is, without a shred of doubt, one of the noblest and gratifying professions an individual can be graced with in his or her life and I count myself fortunate indeed to be given the opportunity to be in this field. At the same time, few professions are so mentally and physically demanding, and require as much dedication, perseverance and constant hard work as teaching. Countless hours of preparation time go into each class and dealing firmly, but fairly, with a horde of students of varying motivation, interest and intelligence can really tax the nerves of the most seasoned in our profession.

The university environment in Pakistan (or at least in Islamabad) does differ in some major respects from the one I have experienced in the twelve years I spent in German universities. My experience has been, in some instances, quite satisfying, while in others it has been quite discomforting. Many Pakistani students I've encountered seem, sadly, less motivated and less committed to their studies than their German peers, are less inclined to spend time reading course-relevant literature, and often seek "shortcuts" in their work. Furthermore, many are accustomed to "rote" learning or learning through memorization which, incidentally, is indicative of acute deficiencies in the hopelessly inadequate Pakistani primary and secondary schooling system which, regretably, have been left unaddressed for decades. Nevertheless, many young people I encounter here do demonstrate good potential and, insofar as my courses are concerned, I see it as a my prime challenge as well as my responsibility to tap into this potential and motivate my students to make the best out of their abilities and to try and bring about improvements, where and when appropriate, in the teaching system at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology.

My teaching methodology relies on the use of multimedia visual aids and Microsoft PowerPoint to convey the essential subject matter to my students. Occasionaly, I use the whiteboard (I do this mainly in my Total Quality Management class). I distribute my PowerPoint slides on a weekly basis in electronic or paper-form to my students. My experience shows, that this approach is quite effective because students can concentrate fully on listening to my lecture without having to hastily scribble down notes. At the same time, I repeatedly emphasize that handouts are NO SUBSTITUTE for the recommended course literature which I expect all my students to read thoroughly from the beginning of the course. In designing my course curricula, I place highest emphasis on thoroughness, giving my students a solid grounding in both fundamental and advanced theoretical concepts of the subject which I supplement with practical case examples. Usually, I invite one or two guest lecturers to give my students a practioners perspective of the subject. 

As of February 2007, I have taught students in our university's MBA programme the subjects Project Management (four times), International Human Resource Management (once) and Business Research Methods (once). I have also taught students in our MS/PhD programme Project Management (three times) and Total Quality Management (once). Each course I teach has a duration of 15 weeks with 3 credit hours per week.   

My entire course material is available for free download below.

The following MS PowerPoint presentations were designed for the Master in Project Management (MPM) programme which my university COMSATS started offering this Fall Semester 2008. I am presently teaching two of the five course modules which are being offered in the first semester, namely, "Fundamentals of Project Management" and "Project Stakeholder and Communication Management". After each class, the presentations will be uploaded. Note that all presentations were originally made with MS PowerPoint 2007 and have been down-converted to MS PowerPoint 1997-2003. If your PC does not have MS Office 2007 with the full version of PowerPoint 2007 installed on it, you may want to download the free MS PowerPoint 2007 viewer which is available here.

SPRING SEMESTER 2006 (DAY CLASS)

• First Sessional Examination
• Second Sessional Examination
• Final Examination

SPRING SEMESTER 2005

• Mid-term Examination

• Final Examination

SPRING SEMESTER 2006 (EVENING CLASS)

• First Sessional Examination

• First Sessional Examination (for repeaters)

• Second Sessional Examination

• Final Examination

FALL SEMESTER 2005

• Mid-term Examination

• Final Examination

• First Sessional Examination

• Second Sessional Examination

• Final Examination

FALL SEMESTER 2006

• Mid-term Examination

• Final Examination

• First Sessional Examination

• Second Sessional Examination

• Final Examination

                FALL SEMESTER 2007

• Mid-term Examination

 

FALL SEMESTER 2007 (EVENING CLASS)

• First Sessional Examination

• Second Sessional Examination

 

For my project management classes, which I have taught seven times to students at the MBA and MS/PhD level in my first four semesters at CIIT, I invited three guest speakers. As I stated before, I consider it of the utmost importance to bring my students together with practitioners of the subject and the guest speaker system is an excellent way of doing this. My first guest speaker, who was recommended to me by one of my colleagues, was Mr. Rashid Mahmood Akhtar, who gave my students a detailed presentation on managing software development projects. This was on the evening of June 15th, 2005, almost at the end of my first semester at CIIT. Mr. Akhtar, who is the General Manager Development at Askari Information Systems in Islamabad, gave his powerpoint presentation entitled "Experiences, Techniques, Tools", which was rather technical (and really very interesting and insightful) to my MS/PhD class in their last session at the semester end. Unfortunately, no photos were taken on this occasion. However, I made sure that a camera was on hand to take photos on the two subsequent occasions when my other project management guest speakers were present.

The photos below were taken at the talk given on the evening of June 5th, 2006, by my second project management guest speaker, Mr. Mohammad Ozair Rasheed from Teradata Pakistan, which is a division of the global NCR Corporation. Mr. Rasheed, the holder of an MBA degree in Management Information Systems from the Institute of Business Administration Karachi and a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Electronics from Dawood College of Engineering and Technology Karachi (NED University Karachi), is currently the Professional Services Manager for Teradata Pakistan and is also managing the Centre of Expertise for projects in the Middle East and Africa. In his position, Mr. Rasheed oversees all projects in the country; he is also the Program Manager for the Centre of Expertise, whose main objective is to identify the right team members for specific projects in a number of fields. With over ten years of experience both international and within Pakistan, he has worked as a consultant for establishing the largest data warehouse infrastructure in Pakistan. He has also worked for Caltex Oil Pakistan Limited, Engro Chemical Pakistan Limited, Crescent Technologies Private Limited and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

I asked Mr. Rasheed at the end of my third semester at CIIT to speak to my MBA students about his personal experience with projects. I was immensely happy when it became apparent that almost everything he said from his own extensive project management experience was fully consistent with what I had taught my students in class. Click on the images to see their full-sized versions. 

I kick off the event by introducing Mr. Mohammed Ozair Rasheed. His insightful and interesting talk lasted about 45 minutes, after which there was a lively discussion session with my students. The multimedia facility was available but Mr. Rasheed did not use it.

Mr. Rasheed addressing the gathering. He corroborated just about everything I had taught my students in their project management course over the semester. They thought I was boring them with too many irrelevant details but they now realized my approach was correct. What a satisfaction for me!  

My students listening attentively to Mr. Rasheed's talk. Seated right at the front is Teradata Pakistan's Manager for Marketing and Public Relations, Ms. Sameerah Siddiqui. A highly competent and cooperative lady with a lively sense of humour, she was the person who arranged for Mr. Rasheed to come.

The students asked many questions. One of the keenest, sitting in the front row on the extreme left, is my student Captain Shahid Khan from the Pakistan Army. He attended three of my courses and, at the convocation in January 2007, was awarded a gold medal from CIIT for his outstanding academic performance.

The "crowning highlight" of the evening. Here I'm making the customary presentation of the CIIT Department of Management Science's shield to our guest for his hard work together with a few words of gratitude on behalf of the class. The department does not offer any honorarium to guest speakers but we do feel that they are entitled to some tangible token of appreciation and this is it.

The photos below were taken on the occasion of Mr. Azam Soofi's talk to my MS/PhD project management class on the early evening of February 1st, 2007. The holder of a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in Management - both from Iowa State University in the United States of America - Mr. Soofi is the Chief Executive Officer of Glimmer Pvt. Ltd. in Islamabad. He is a project management consultant with 28 years of project development and engineering experience, having held various senior executive positions in Pakistan and USA in world class organizations like Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, and Rockwell International. His main expertise includes directing the development of large complex projects from concept in record time and least cost. As the Chief Executive Officer of Lucky Cement he developed and implemented the 5000 tonnes per day cement plant and a 48 MW power plant for total cost of USD160 Million in a remote area of Pakistan in record time. During his tenure with Westinghouse, he was trained as a power generation, control system specialist and managed implementation of multi-billion Dollar power plant projects throughout the world. His experience includes engineering, installation and maintenance on hydro, thermal and nuclear power plants of all sizes. In Pakistan under the US AID /World Bank umbrella he was deputed to Ministry Of Planning for four years as a Power System Advisor. During this period he help solve multiple power infrastructural problems which saved this country multi-million Dollars. He has also helped develop and train government employees in the utilization of the Least Cost Generation econometric model to help future planning for implementation of power generation in Pakistan. I had asked Mr. Soofi at the end of my fourth semester at CIIT to speak to my students about his personal experience with managing projects. Yet again, to my immense satisfaction, it was apparent that almost everything he said from his project management experience was fully consistent with what I had taught my MBA students in class. Click on the images to see their full-sized versions. 

Mr. Soofi getting down to business after I introduced him to the gathering. His informal and highly insightful talk lasted about 60 minutes and was followed by about 45 minutes of lively discussion and an unending barrage of questions which I had to cut short because of lack of time.

Some of the participants. Like with Mr. Ozair in the preceeding semester, Mr. Soofi did not give a formal presentation but given his calibre, it certainly wasn't needed! Listening to him in the last class of the semester was pure enjoyment and an intellectual enrichment for all those who were present.

The six female members of my class are seated in the back rows. In the front is my esteemed Egyptian colleague and friend, Dr. Mohammad Nasr, who also teaches my MS/PhD class. He is a real jolly and energetic fellow who brings a lot of liveliness and humour into every departmental event.   

All these persons are students of my MS/PhD class (with the exception of my colleague Nasir "Doctor Proctor" Jamal whose seated in the back on the extreme right).  

Well, by now you would (or should) know what this photo is about. Unfortunately, it came out somewhat blurry. Seems that the hand of the person holding the camera was shaking a bit. Now I wonder why. Was the excitement of the evening too much to handle?

Mr. Soofi engrossed in a chit chat with my colleagues Nasir Jamal (middle) and Dr. Awais Siraj (right) after the talk and discussion. I had the department lay out a table with light refreshments outside hall 211 which is where the event was held.

Here, after the talk and after the light refreshments had been consumed, I posed for a photo with the male students of my MS/PhD project management class. From left to right: Faisal Nawaz, Muhammad Jamshed Khan, Rahim Buksh Soomro, me, Muhammad Haroon and Habib-ur-Rehman. I wanted the six female members of the class to be in the photo too but they had already left by then. 

For my course on Total Quality Management, I require my students to at least read the book "Total Quality Management" by Dale H. Besterfield / Carol Besterfield-Michna / Glen H. Besterfield / Mary Besterfield-Sacre. Students are also expected to read "Total Quality Management: Text, Cases and Readings" by Joel E. Ross as a supplement. PowerPoint slides on Total Quality Management from a course on this subject taught by Dr. Sue Lindsay at the Faculty of Business and Informatics of the Central Queensland University in Australia can be downloaded here. My own course programe can be downloaded here. Students are encouraged to visit the website of the Pakistan Institute of Quality Control and read the interesting case studies posted there.

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