This is Professor Mostafa Azad Kamal. Joined Bangladesh Open University in 1995 as a lecturer in Economics, he was engaged in various academic activities like module writing, academic research, student counseling, etc. He coordinated various programs and courses at the School of Business, Bangladesh Open University. Professor Azad is presently working as the treasurer and also as the Dean of the School of Business, Bangladesh Open University. He is a Professor in International and Development Economics. He has been engaged in open and distance learning for the last 25 years. He worked as the Director of the Elearning Center at Bangladesh Open University for from January 2015 to December 2016. He has been working as a member of the International Academic Board for Commonwealth Executive MBA and MPA programs, Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada since 2013. Professor Azad is also a Creative Commons Fellow for Open leadership. He is the Country Representative for Creative Commons Bangladesh Chapter. He was one of the mentors in the Open Education for Better World (OE4BW), an initiative of UNESCO. His works mostly focus on research, awareness building and policy development relating to OER, Open Education, online learning, Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Innovations and Open Government. Professor Azad got experience in coordinating, supporting and evaluating a number of international and national projects relating to blended learning, OER, ODL and quality assurance in higher education. He was involved in the development of OER Policy for Bangladesh Open University, the National OER Policy for Bangladesh, OER Policy for Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), OER Policy for Tamil Nadu Open University (TNOU), OER Policy for Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU) and OER Policy for Open University of Sri Lanka. Recently, he facilitated the OER Capacity Building workshops for 1000 faculty members and officials from 20 universities of Bangladesh. He also helped these 20 universities develop their institutional OER Policies. He got specialized training on instructional design in open learning and eLearning from Waterloo University, Canada and Open Polytechnic, New Zealand respectively.
Professor Azad coordinated a number of projects including the projects titled “Rural Women Skill Training in Managing Small Enterprises” funded by Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Vancouver, Canada, and “Management Skill Training for Middle Managers of export-led Garments Factories in Bangladesh” funded by COL, OXFAM, DFID, Verité & PWIBLF. He also worked as the coordinator of the project titled ‘Innovative Elearning Initiative for Reaching the Unreached” funded by Access to Information (a2i) wing under the honorable Prime Minister’s Office. He worked as consultant in several training and research projects funded by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Commonwealth Educational Media Center for Asia (CEMCA).
Prof. Azad published more than 40 research papers and chapters in different national and international journals/research books/conference proceedings. He is the author of 4 books, 2 guide books and 7 training modules. He attended a number of conferences, seminars, and workshops as keynote speaker, presenter, panellist or trainer at home and abroad. He attended and presented academic papers at various international conferences including the Pan-Commonwealth Forum (PCF), AAOU Conference, CIRN Conference, Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) Conference, UNESCO OER Congress, and UNESCO AI Conference.
Professor Azad visited several countries including Singapore, Sri Lanka, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK, Canada, USA, South Africa, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Mauritius, Nigeria, India, Portugal, and Slovenia.
Education Is Power! 