F.P. Report
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Higher Education Department (HED) has provided students of several public sector universities and colleges with access to the digital library of Higher Education Commission (HEC) at home and hostels for research purposes.
According to Mohammad Ayaz Khan, Deputy Secretary Administration at the HED, 7,798 university and 1,000 college students can now benefit the digital library of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) at their homes and hostels using login credentials given to individual students.
Commenting on the development, Ayaz Khan added that the department had constituted a team to install Virtual Private Network (VPN) servers on pilot bases in selected institutions,
“The team successfully installed the VPN servers using available resources and the system was tested on pilot basis in two colleges and 10 universities. The decision to provide access to the HED digital library has been taken on the directives of Chief Secretary” said Ayaz.
Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Secretary HED stated that this is a remarkable step towards ensuring effective use of Information Technology for educational purposes.
“With these reforms, our objective is to promote research culture in the province and provide access to paid research to students. We have plans to extend the facility to all the research students of BS, M-phil and Ph.d”, he stated.
Mr Shah furthered that the initiative will soon be extended to 25 major BS colleges of the province. Previously, students in colleges and universities could only access the digital library at their respective educational institutions.
