Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Microsoft in Pakistan have renewed the Education Transformation Agreement (ETA). Both organizations partnered once again to help enable positive changes to learning outcomes for the students in the country. The collaboration reimagines the education landscape, which is facing a lot of challenges, especially in post-pandemic recovery. Under the umbrella of this academic alliance, Microsoft and HEC will be providing a number of services to all HEIs in leveraging new technologies to make learning inclusive, personalized, and student-centric by blending remote and physical classrooms.
This ETA will be providing universities with knowledge transfer workshops and training on trending Microsoft technologies including Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Azure. So far during Pandemic, more than 150 Universities and 500,000 plus students took advantage of effective learning, all in one place, which let students, faculty, educators, and staff meet, work together, create content, and share resources in Office 365 Education – featuring the simple, intuitive power of Microsoft Teams.
One of the flagship programs of this agreement is Imagine Cup, a global students technology competition organized by Microsoft with the local support of the Higher Education Commission. It provides an opportunity for student technologists, developers, and aspiring entrepreneurs from all academic backgrounds to collaborate, develop a technology application, and bring their passion to life while gaining a perspective of what is needed to bring a concept to market. In Imagine Cup, the brightest young minds join to exemplify the power of student innovation. Each year, a team is chosen from Pakistan that competes against the best from around the world, to get a chance to win USD 100,000 and a mentoring session with Microsoft’s leadership team. This year, Imagine Cup is live again and students can register at https://imaginecup.com/Pakistan.
“Our long-term partnership with Microsoft empowers the students to use their creativity in addressing real societal problems using Modern Technology. Microsoft has been very helpful in nurturing creative minds through Imagine cup competitions so many of the participants practically implement their ideas into successful startups and turn it into companies. It is proud moment for HEC that our talent is being exposed at Global events and bring laurels for Pakistan” said HEC Director General IT Nazeer Hussain.
Country Education Lead for Microsoft Pakistan Mr. Jibran Jamshed expressed his views
“We know that technology is a key to fuel economic development, increase work force competitiveness, transitions to a knowledge-based economy and help drive job creation. The single most important use of technology is to improve education and yet in many countries in the world we have not yet seen digital transformation in education. Change requires strong partnerships and trust. Under HEC’s visionary leadership, the aim of this ETA is to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation and design classrooms that foster reform and inspire students to achieve a plethora of success.”
