The Centre for Teaching Excellence and Learning Innovation at Iqra University is a strategic center focused on academic quality assurance, university policy making, and faculty professional development.

We diligently pursue excellence, inclusion, relevance, innovation, and impact as the cornerstones of our initiatives across the university.

With more than 800 faculty members appointed for a student body of over 15,000 students, Iqra University is firmly rooted in the disciplinary areas of business management, engineering and computer sciences, education, health sciences, media studies, and fashion design in seven campuses across two major cities Karachi and Islamabad.

Our initiatives are driven by a mindfulness about our students coming from diverse socio-economic, cultural, geographical, and linguistic backgrounds. We thus engage, prepare, and enable our faculty to scaffold the student learning experience such that our students are equipped with market-ready skills and disposition when they graduate.

Vision

Our vision is to progressively augment the efforts of our faculty to advance and inspire excellence in the Iqra University’s teaching and learning community.

Mission

Our mission is to innovate faculty professional development through the use of cutting-edge strategies, contextualized pedagogy, and advanced technology.

We apply insights from current and seminal research along with the best teaching practices that are globally recognized and locally relevant.

We support faculty in ensuring effective student learning experiences through:

Methodology

We employ dynamic, research-informed methods such as design-centered approaches and agile-based strategies to understand, analyze, and meet our professional development needs through:

Design-Centered Approach

Our Center’s approach to CPD strategic policy development is driven by the non-linear, design thinking process. Conceptually, we foreground the teacher and the learner in the dynamic terrain of problem-solving through the processes of inspiration, ideation, and implementation.

Agile-based Strategies

We work closely with our faculty and engage our students to devise teaching strategies for an ever improving and evolving outcome-based learning experience. For our trainings focused on pedagogy, assessment design, and technology integration, we employ agile-based strategies that constitute shorter bursts of content and skills engagement followed by deep, introspective reflection at the individual and collective level.

Center Activities

Center Calendar (programmes & trainings)

CTELI News

1. Institutional membership with Advance HE, UK (March 15,2022) IQRA University is delighted to become the first Pakistani private university with campuses exclusively in Pakistan to sign institutional membership with AdvanceHE, UK. The signing ceremony to mark institutional membership with AdvanceHE, UK was chaired by IQRA University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr. Wasim Qazi and Mr. Ian Hall, Head of International Partnerships at AdvanceHE, UK along with Dr. Fariha Hayat Salman, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Teaching Excellence & Learning Innovation (CTELI) and Senior Management from across the campuses.Propelled by CTELI, this partnership will enable IQRA University to develop the professional capacity of its multidisciplinary, Ph.D. faculty through the UK Fellowships as benchmarked by the globally recognized UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).
   • LinkedIn post: https://bit.ly/3iFEa3x
   • Press-release (English): https://bit.ly/3wGSK32
   • Advance HE: https://bit.ly/3Fo3Xrq
2. Faculty Retreat Spring 2022 (Feb 22-24) was conducted across the departments of Business Administration, Engineering Sciences, Media Studies, and English as part of the university’s Faculty Professional Development Program. The retreat days were designed and led by Dr. Fariha Hayat Salman, Associate Professor & Director Centre of Teaching Excellence & Learning Innovation (CTELI). Participants included department heads, cluster-heads, and teaching faculty who engaged in interactive full-day training sessions where they employed cognitive frameworks for program ideation and curriculum enrichment for the upcoming academic year.
   • LinkedIn post: https://bit.ly/3Den3iU

For further details about the Center’s current and future offerings, contact:

Dr. Fariha Hayat Salman leads initiatives focused on faculty’s continuous professional development, programmatic quality assurance, and policy making at Iqra University.

She has a Ph.D. in Learning, Design, and Technology from the Pennsylvania State University, USA, Masters in Educational & Social Research (MRes) from the UCL, Institute of Education, UK, and Masters in English Linguistics from the University of Karachi, Pakistan. She is the honored recipient of prestigious awards
such as the USA Fulbright Scholarship, IOE Centenary Research Award, Penn State Dean’s Fellowship in Research Engagement, and the Ardeth & Norman Frisbey Global Award.

With more than 15 years in Higher Education, Dr. Fariha has held the coveted position of Quality Analyst with the US State Public Education Department, has served as Principal Investigator at Penn State, and held academic positions at the Birkbeck University London and Imperial College London. As faculty member AKU-IED, she taught and advised graduate students in the areas of English Language Education and Research Methods in the M.Ed. Programme. She led programmatic units in E-Learning and Student Academic Support, and contributed to development projects funded by World Bank, USAID, and UNESCO.

Dr. Fariha has spearheaded competitive research grants cumulatively worth $80,000 through which she explored the curricular implementation of an AR- sustainable engineering system, and led initiatives on STEAM game design studios, and inclusive research writing labs.

She maintains an active profile on Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and ORCID and is an enthusiast in the areas of design centered thinking, informal learning spaces, technology integration, interdisciplinary curriculum development, and academic quality assurance.