I had always loved teaching.

The classroom had been my charging room.

However, becoming and educationist is different.

My first formal introduction to Medical Education was through the Certificate Course in Health Professionals Education, which I started because of mendatory requirement from Pakistan Medical and Dental Council.

I felt excited, and felt that this was something I had been looking for.  The course was specially fun because of the attendees, who accompanied me.

To me its a humble beginning of a professional life I have envisioned for future.....

For some, Covid was an opportunity, and I was luckily among them.  Besides Dow, I was also associated with Institute of Business Management, where I was teaching Psychology.  The teaching at IoBM went through a smooth transition with emphasis on effective higher order learning practices and a lot of use of technology through the LMS.  During those times, I learned to develop rubrics and open book exams with emphasis on analysis and application of konwledge

During Covid, HEC started Digital Learning and Skill Enrichment Initiative.  For me, it was a blessing.  Up till now, I have completed more than 15 courses from the DLSEI program only.  I got a chance to enrich my knowledge about Education, Marketing, Personal Development and Digital Health.

During Covid, I also got a chance to work as Consultant Social Messaging and Advocacy for Humwell, which was a digital Health Platform.  During one and a half years with Humwell, we recorded about 100 videos (including a Q&A program with the name Sehat Talks) for Humwell's facebook page and I wrote multiple blogs on healthcare for Humwell's blog page.

The best part for working for Humwell was, that I gradually learned to face the camera, which helped me develop videos for my Youtube Channel.

As we kept working for Humwell, I developed a studio at my home and trained a student as video editor.  We still regularly develop video content for teaching and learning, personal development and professionalism.

Once I was done with the CHPE, my interest in Medical Education converted to enthusiasm.

I wanted (and still want) to pursue it as a career.  I looked around and the best in access, was the MHPE program of the Aga Khan University.

It was expensive, but I decided to start anyway.  I had to make a choice of buying a new car, or investing in my education.  I decided to make the investment.

The best parf of getting enrolled in the MHPE program, was the companionship.  I met some amazing people as fellows and teachers.  The best part was,  that my wife, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at AKU decided to join in with me.

Finally we have some common academic matters to discuss.....

In February, 2022, I was able to qualify for Professorship and was appointed as a Professor of Microbiology at my alma mater, Dow Medical College. 

For me, this was the beginning of a new life, as now I would be able to shape my academic activities the way I wanted, focussing on the things that matter, and have impact on the lives of those, who do not as blessed as we are.

One of my strongest beliefs is, education should be free or heavily subsidized, or at least, it should be paid for by those, who can afford to pay.

Students are our future, we as a nation, think about investing in future, and not earning from it.

Each child who misses the school, or a chance to get education, is a missed opportunity for us, and an impending disaster.

 I was happy that I would be able to focus on my educational activies, and happier that I was free from the administrative load of the labs and now I could do more of what I wanted to do.

In July, 2022, I was appointed as Additional Director Distance Learning and Online Teaching. 

Distance Learning, e-learning and teaching with technology are areas I am enthusiastic about.  Initially we were only four people, Professor Zubair, Dr. Jaffer and Maaz Bin Ahmed, but our team is gradually growing and is ready to make an impact.

I dream of a day, we might have remote centers in the farthest, inaccessable areas of Paksitan, where a child could walk in, log into an installed  system with his own credentials, and learn through a personalized mastery based tailored program of his choice and liking.

That can only happen with the use of technology and our utilization of Disetance Learning for educating our nation.

As an educational innovation, we started an e-journal as a reflective practice for the first year.  The idea of resurrecting the journal was given by the HoD of Pathology, Prof. Naseem Ahmed.  I modified it a bit and the journal was developed on google forms with the help of faculty members of the Department of Pathology at Dow Medical College.  It is currently in implementation phase for the first year MBBS at Dow Medical College.  

It was also approved by the BoS of Pathology and an Institutional Review board approval was taken for this project to assess the impact and explore the experience.