Tech Valley, in partnership with Google for Education, hosted a Focus Group Discussion conducted under the Tech Valley Research Center at the Gulf and Country Club in Islamabad, bringing together 22 faculty members, deans, and department heads from COMSATS University Islamabad, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), National University of Modern Languages (NUML), FAST-NUCES Islamabad Campus, Air University, and the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI), along with representation from the Higher Education Commission. Participants spanned disciplines ranging from Computer Science and Engineering to Pharmacy, Management Sciences, and Education, giving the discussion a fairly broad cross-section of academic perspectives rather than limiting the conversation to technical faculty alone.
Mohyuddin Ahmed Wani, Secretary of the Ministry of Inter Provincial Coordination, joined as Special Guest of Honor and spoke with participants about how AI is currently shaping the higher education sector and public service delivery, encouraging faculty to champion the responsible use of AI for the professional development of both students and teachers. The 95 minute session centered on a single pressing question: how ready is Pakistan’s higher education faculty to make responsible decisions about Generative AI in teaching and assessment. Faculty worked through real dilemmas in small-table discussions, including a live scenario on handling undisclosed AI use in student work, giving the conversation a practical, case-based structure rather than remaining purely theoretical.
Several consistent themes emerged from the discussions. Participants agreed that responsible GenAI use starts with teacher preparedness, since faculty need to model good practice before students can be expected to follow suit, while also noting that institutions currently sit at very different stages, with access, infrastructure, and clear policy frameworks still uneven across universities. Faculty argued that assessment design needs to evolve, shifting toward process-based, viva-based, and analysis-driven methods rather than relying solely on written output that AI tools can now generate convincingly. Training emerged as the most requested need among participants, spanning technical skills, prompting techniques, and the ethical and data-privacy dimensions of AI use, while faculty also stressed that policy conversations must be collaborative, bringing in subject-matter experts, education specialists, and regional voices rather than being decided in isolation by administrators alone.
Faculty left the session with concrete next steps to take back to their respective institutions, ranging from revisiting existing guidelines to piloting new assessment approaches, as part of a broader push toward shared standards for responsible AI adoption in higher education. The discussion adds to a series of similar faculty focused AI training initiatives that have taken place across Pakistani universities in recent months, including workshops organized by the Punjab Higher Education Commission at institutions like King Edward Medical University, reflecting a broader push across the higher education sector to build faculty readiness for AI integrated teaching and assessment. Tech Valley indicated more sessions of this kind are planned, suggesting the Islamabad discussion represents an initial phase in a longer running effort to build shared standards for responsible GenAI adoption across the country’s universities.
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