Bridging Educational Gaps through Volunteers: Implementation, Problems and Their Solutions

Apr 25, 2016·
Tabish Manzoor
Dr. Waleed Iqbal
Dr. Waleed Iqbal
,
Eisha Tir Razia
,
Samia Razaq
· 0 min read
Abstract
Teachers play a central role in education. However, factors such as non-teaching duties imposed on teachers and low or insufficient teacher qualifications can lower the quality of education, especially in developing countries. We propose a volunteer-based solution named EDUCATION ASAAN in Pakistan, where volunteers are placed with teachers across public- and private-sector institutes to share workload, complement learning, and improve quality. The paper presents semi-structured interviews with teachers, surveys with students and potential volunteers, and discusses the problems in selection, placement and evaluation of volunteers.
Type
Publication
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD ’16), ACM
publications
ICTD
Dr. Waleed Iqbal
Authors
Dr. Waleed Iqbal

I am Waleed Iqbal, an Assistant Professor in Data Science at Northeastern University, based at their London Campus.

I also hold positions of Teaching Fellow in Computer Science at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London and Associate Lecturer at Arden University London.

I received my PhD in Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Ignacio Castro and Prof. Gareth Tyson in the Social Data Science (SDS) Lab, Networks Research Group at Queen Mary University of London.

My research interests are broadly in manifestation of socio-economic inequality in online user activity.

Previously, I worked at IHSAN Lab in Information Technology University Lahore, Pakistan, supervised by Prof. Dr. Junaid Qadir as a postgraduate thesis student, affiliated researcher, and teaching assistant.

Since September 2023, I am endorsed and recognised as UK Global Talent (Exceptional Promise) in the Research and Academic Category by the Royal Academy of Engineering UK and granted Global Talent Visa by the Government of the United Kingdom.