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Right: One of the seminar sessions

In February this year, a team of experts in technology-assisted distance education braved the coldest winter Mongolia has had in 40 years, to conduct a Seminar in Ulaanbataar. The visitors from the University of British Columbia (Canada), Baptist University of Hong Kong, the Open University of Indonesia, and IDRC's Pan Asia Networking conducted Mongolia's first-ever Workshop on Web-based Distance Education. Mongolian participants learnt about methodologies on designing, developing and delivering instructional courses on the net, with remarkable eagerness.

Back in 1993/94, Datacom, a local IT startup, collaborated with IDRC to bring the first Internet connectivity and Web development services to Mongolia. This is the history that has spawned today's vibrant Internet environment for private business, government, academia and non-profits.

Now, Mongolia is ready to move on to uptake of more challenging innovations - in the field of technology-supported distance education. The Workshop, which was funded by IDRC's Pan Asia Networking is a major component of the PAN-Mongolia Distance Education project. It was attended by some 40 participants from local educational institutions and other interested parties. The Workshop introduced the participants to basic concepts of designing, developing and delivering online courses.

The English for Special Purposes Institute (ESPI) is the lead agency in implementing the project. The other main stakeholder institutions are Datacom Co. Ltd, the Mongolian Women NGO Coalition and InfoCon Co. Ltd. The distance education courses will initially focus on a few chosen areas such as English Language, Information Technology and Gender Issues.

Datacom is also assisting ESPI to develop PAN's Enhanced Vocalization Engine (EVE) tool for teaching English pronunciation. They will take EVE from a proof-of-concept to a development stage.

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Mongolia is a traditional pastoral country and nomadic and semi-nomadic ways of life. More than half (57%) of Mongolia's 2.5 million population live in urban areas, with approximately 25% residing in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The Mongolian Government recognizes the potential role that emergent Internet-based distance education technologies can play in its educational system, to spread and make available the teaching resources from the capital, Ulaanbataar, to the country's vast rural provinces.

According to Mr R Bat-Erdene, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Culture (MOSTEC), the Government aims to deliver distance education to 75% of the population by the year 2010. There is great optimism that this mission will succeed due to Mongolia's high literacy rate - at 82.9%, it is one of the highest in the world. Through this project, PAN is assisting the educational authorities in Mongolia to strategize a plan for technology-based distance education within its national education policy framework.

PAN is highly optimistic that the Mongolian distance education model will become a prototype from which it can transfer and share the lessons learnt to other Asian countries which are looking to the new educational technologies to help solve the problems of access to education for their rural populations.

More Photos from the seminar can be found at Infocon Co., Ltd.

Visit Mongolian Art Gallery -- browse and purchase oil paintings on canvas from Mongolian artist Sodnom Togs-Oyun.

Listen to Mongolian Music?

2002-03-03

News 31 of 50