Successful Completion of Professional Development Program under the TELSHEB Project Run by British Council and UGC Bangladesh

Under the project titled Transforming English Language Skills in the Higher Education Sector in Bangladesh (TELSHEB), the British Council and the UGC Bangladesh have jointly created four different modules titled English for Academic Purposes 1 (EAP 1), English for Academic Purposes 2 (EAP 2), English for Employability (EfE) and Professional Development (PD), with a plan to implement first three modules as uniformed English course materials for students in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Bangladesh in January 2015 and the last one as a professional development course for the subject teachers of the HEIs.  AIUB started the roll out in pilot basis of these four modules for the duration of January 2014 to June 2014 through the master trainers of this project Mr. M Hamidul Haque and Mr. Asif Kamal, Assistant Professors, Department of English, AIUB.

After the completion of these courses, British Council and UGC jointly provided certificates to be distribution to 210 students and 26 teachers of AIUB who successfully completed the courses under these modules.   The certificates were distributed among the participants of the modules in presence of the honorable Pro-Vice Chancellor of AIUB Prof. Dr. Charles Villanueva as the chief guest, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Tazul Islam and Head of the Department of English Dr. Faheem Hasan Shahed on 17 July 2014 in the seminar room of Campus 7, AIUB. The heads and faculty members from different departments were also present in the occasion.

Earlier, these modules were designed after a phase of need analysis in Bangladeshi Institutions. The features of the modules include task based lessons for learner centered classroom with large numbers of group and pair works along with physical movements in classroom with an aim to facilitate active learning instead of passive teaching.  This is probably the first initiative to use texts with local contexts as English language learning materials for higher education in Bangladesh. The success of the roll out was monitored through visits by the UK consultants Mr. Kevin Balchin, Mr. Richard Cullen and Ms. Carol Wild accompanied by local monitors Professor Hamidur Rahman and Ms. Farheen Hasan (also one of the authors of the modules) in four different phases starting from February 9, 2014. They all collected the feedback from the students and the Master Trainers, and praised the successful roll out of the modules in AIUB.

Before this rollout phase, a ten-day long training session from 10th December 13 to 20th December 13 was held for the Master Trainers of this project. AIUB's Department of English is a proud partner in this project as one of the need analyses was conducted in AIUB as well as two of the twenty master trainers selected from different public and private educational institutions from the whole of Bangladesh are from AIUB. Master Trainer Mr. M Hamidul Haque is also one of the authors of the modules rolled out. Moreover, the audio-visual materials imbedded in these modules are created by the media studio of AIUB under the supervision of Mr. M Hamidul Haque. However, the training session was successfully conducted by two UK consultants Mr. Richard Cullen and Mr. Mark Almond. The Vice Chancellor of AIUB Dr. Carmen Zita Lamagna graced the chair of special guest in the inauguration of the training and also extended the heartfelt support to make the project successful.  After the training, the Master trainers started the roll out of the modules in their respective institutions.