Country's first IT-based university in the offing

---

Monira Munni
The government is going to set up a fully information technology-based public university to create more IT-educated and skilled manpower to help the country reach its Digital Bangladesh goal.
Bangabandhu Digital University, a Korea-Bangladesh joint venture, would be the country's first and largest IT-based educational institution, to be built at a cost of $15 million (1.5 crore) at Kaliakoir's Chandra crossing in Gazipur.
The university will accommodate a school, a college, a research centre and residential buildings on 18.5 acres of land, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) President Mustafa Jabbar told the FE.
"The government recently approved the establishment of Bangabandhu Digital University," the BCS president said.
Korean Agency for Development would provide its portion of the fund which would be repaid at 50 per cent of its usual interest rate in 40 years.
The construction work of the university will start in early 2010 and is to be completed by 2012, Jabbar added expressing hope that the educational activities would begin in 2013.
"At first they will start from pre-primary (shishu shreni) to class 12," Mr Jabbar said.
"The university building will be constructed gradually but the research centre will be completed before that."
"The research centre would provide all study materials required for the students."
The campus will be fully residential and no class will accommodate more than 50 students.
There will be no use of traditional materials like paper or books and the class will be taken by using digital boards, projectors, etc, Jabbar said adding that there will be a total internet network system through which a student can attend the lectures without being personally present in the class in case of illness.
A student can also make queries and the teacher will interact with him by this network system and "this will be the interactive education system unlike our traditional one," the BCS president explained.
The students will give online examination and the results could be known immediately after the examination.
Talking to the FE about the subjects of the university, Jabbar said the subjects will include games, software engineering and call centre which our traditional universities never provide.
There will be other subjects too but those will be IT knowledge-based. For example, there will be subjects related to economy like digital banking and finance. Bengali and English will be compulsory up to class 12, he explained.
The materials used for the educative purpose will be available for the entire country from the research centre.