Food for Thought

Bangladeshi universities are concerned about implementing online teaching and assessment to combat epidemic situations though there is skepticism regarding online education. I would like to share some of my recent learnings during my master’s program in Australia. Understandably, the Australian context is quite dissimilar to our country but still, we can gather some gross insights that might provide us with some basic thoughts for online teaching and assessment strategies. Because of highly developed IT infrastructure, knowledge, and initiatives, and financial strength, no universities in Australia faced any kind of major interruptions in the academic semesters since the pandemic hit the country. I am trying to produce a synopsis of how they managed it with excellent outcomes. How did they operate? 1.       Since the universities are independent in academic decision making, the universities planned well ahead sensing the pandemic situations to move to online educatio...

In Bangladesh, the agriculture sector contributes 13.32% to our GDP (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2019) and it absorbs the biggest portion (41%) of the labor force (Ministry of Agriculture, 2018). About 64.96% of the total population live in rural areas (World Bank, 2016) and the majority of them are directly or indirectly engaged in a wide range of agricultural activities. Apparently, the rural development is directly linked to agro-industry development. Again another estimation of World Bank says, “Growth in agriculture is two to four times more powerful at reducing poverty than growth in other sectors”. Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing (ICESDF) also emphasizes that Bangladesh needs huge investment for sectors like agriculture and rural development. Hence, in a broad sense, it is clear that agro-industry comprised of agribusinesses can play a vital role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in an agriculture-based developing eco...

The big size population is not a problem when they are human resources equipped with skills and knowledge. And one of the major aims of the education system is to develop human resources so that humans do not become a burden for a country. And that is why the education system is the most indispensable component of national development strategy. Any lacking of the system will contribute to lagging behind in development race. Overall education system: Our education system is producing hundreds, thousands of Masters Degree holders every year. In spite of this, it is surprising that still we are slowcoach in many development areas and we hire foreigners for the top positions of the big companies. So the question arises – if our graduates are not productive enough. A British Council sponsored report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on graduate unemployment in South Asia published earlier of 2015 estimated that 47% of the graduates are unemployed in Banglades...