یہ زخم اپنے دل کا تو سِل بھی سکتا تھا
تُو کن اگر جو کہتا وہ مل بھی سکتا تھا
پژمردہ سا یہ غنچہ ہم دل ہیں جس کو کہتے
گر ساتھ وہ جو چلتا تو کھل بھی سکتا تھا
The abundance of technology nowadays is contributing to the development of learning practices. This gives learners greater opportunity to find, access, and use resources to benefit learning. Open educational resources (OER) are one of the few educational developments that emerged with technology. While it is true that there are a lot of OERs available on the internet, it is unsure how many learners are aware of their existence. This research aimed to identify how many students are aware of OERs, where they use OERs, and whether the educational institution encourages OERs. The researchers surveyed several students within the University of the Philippines Open University. The survey included learner demographics, statistics on learners' awareness and usage of OERs, learners' OER access locations, and the challenges they encounter when using OERs. The survey showed that the learners, regardless of age, are aware of OERs. They mostly access videos, research, and journals on web pages and Wikis. They find the OERs accessible and relevant, but reliability and visibility are challenging.
Over past few decades, the mutual fund industry has grabbed attention of researchers. However, mutual funds in emerging markets including Pakistan has not undergone rapid pace due to number of constraints. Therefore, the models/ theories applied to developed markets cannot be applied to emerging markets. Hence, the present study tries to reveal new dimensions by investigate the timing abilities of fund manager. This study investigates whether fund managers are actively managing the funds or just adding additional costs to the investors in case of Pakistan. To be more specific, three questions are addressed in this study in three different essays for the period December 2009 to February 2016. The empirical findings of first essay suggest the existence of market timing and volatility timing abilities at an aggregate level. However, stock-timing ability is absent at an aggregate level. The results indicate a weak connection between timing abilities and fund attributes. The second essay provides an insight about variation in performance and timing abilities during bull and bear market conditions using Exponentional Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (EGARCH). This is the first study to estimate the timing abilities by using EGARCH specification. The empirical findings confirm that mutual funds perform better during bull market conditions than bear market conditions. As far as timing abilities are concerned, this study provides evidence in favor of market timing and volatility timing abilities during bear market conditions and stock-timing ability for bull market conditions. However, these results remain insignificant for style timing abilities under both market conditions. The robustness test using OLS also support these findings. The third essay explores the persistence phenomenon in timing abilities of fund managers. The closing value of PSX 100 index is used as median to divide sample period into two sub-periods. The empirical findings fail to find any evidence of persistence with regard to performance, selectivity skill, market timing skill and volatility timing skill under single-index, three-index and four-index model. These findings offer certain policy implications for various stakeholders, including management, regulators and investors. For investors, as mutual fund possess timing skills so they can be better pay off by investing in mutual funds and they should consider mutual fund industry as a new investment avenue for their future investments. These results also help the regulators to set a minimum legal framework for mutual funds to continue their operations in the said industry. Managers can reduce risks by utilizing information in advance and develop those skills that can help them to analyse market conditions, coping with new trends and challenges in industry and implementing and devising strategies to follow government regulations.