Faculty Perspective on the Challenges Faced During Implementation of Integrated Curriculum

Background: Curriculum is a dynamic thing that has evolved over the years to ensure the competency of health care professionals. Due to guidelines issued by international accrediting agencies, University College of Medicine & Dentistry implemented an integrated modular curriculum in 2015 that is coordinated and coherent.  Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore the difficulties that the faculty faced while implementing an integrated curriculum for the undergraduate dental program (BDS) at the University College of Dentistry, The University of Lahore.   Methods: This descriptive exploratory study was conducted from September 2020 till January 2021 at University College of Dentistry, The University of Lahore. Thirty-five faculty members were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed thematically after being transcribed. Results: Six themes emerged from the analysis of interviews. These themes were: working environment, distribution of workload, communication, faculty development and retention, evaluation and leadership. Conclusions: Integrated curriculum may be the need of the hour; however, its implementation comes with a set of challenges, which include a non-conducive working environment, uneven distribution of workload, absence of a sound faculty development and retention program, or absence of adequate resources. These factors may hinder the implementation of the integrated curriculum.

Stability Estimates for the Elliptic and Parabolic Obstacle Problems

Stability of the solution of the multidimensional unilateral obstacle problem with respect to the variations of the coefficients of the corresponding second order partial differential operator is studied in the present thesis. A H ̈lder type stability estimate in the second order Sobolev space of functions is o established for the solution of the elliptic obstacle problem. Rodrigues ([25, 1987]) proved the stability result with respect to bounded external force functions under the nondegeneracy condition. We generalize this result to the case of arbitrary functions belonging to the space Lp (D), p ≥ 2. Further parabolic obstacle problem is studied with different principal parts in the parabolic differential operator and applied to the American put option problem with various local volatility functions. The estimate of the area between the early exercise boundaries through the uniform distance between the local volatility functions is obtained.