Bhutan/OER

Overview

Bhutan (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཡུལ་; Wylie transliteration: ʼbrug-yul "Druk Yul"), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia located at the eastern end of the Himalayas. It is bordered to the north by China and to the south, east and west by the Republic of India. Further west, it is separated from Nepal by the Indian state of Sikkim, while further south it is separated from Bangladesh by the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal. Bhutan's capital and largest city is Thimphu and its population is 742,737.

Further information

For further general information see Wikipedia:Bhutan/OER.

Education in Bhutan/OER

For a general description of education in Bhutan/OER see Education:Bhutan/OER.

e-learning

For a description more focussed to e-learning see E-learning:Bhutan/OER.

OER Initiatives in Bhutan/OER

The UNESCO website reports "Open access awareness is slowly spreading in this democratic country though only recently. Awareness of and use of Free/Open Source Software is being considered; for instance the digital library project of the Department of Information Technology and Telecom in collaboration with the University of Virginia." The "Preservation and promotion of tradition and cultural values is mandated by the Bhutan Information and Policy Strategy, which asserted that 'Bhutan will use ICT to preserve and promote its cultural heritage and boost the creation of local content to develop an invaluable record of Bhutanese culture for Bhutanese students and researchers. It aims to bring all stakeholders together to develop one digital library encompassing bibliographies, folktales, digital reprints of religious and ritual texts, journals, and audio and video collections. It will create online cataloguing records, transcripts, and analysis of audio-video collections of all Bhutanese cultural contents and other artifacts.'"However, UNESCO also notes that "Lack of essential resources, public awareness and institutional infrastructure are the barriers for the emerging open access concept. Language skills especially English language for technical communication is lacking. Need to create content in the national language Dzongkha is essential." (1)

Rennie and Mason make similar observations, claiming that "The Internet structure is rudimentary, particularly outwith the capital, and is not consistently reliable enough to permit even a moderate level of technological networking beyond email exchanges. Telephone networks are heavily dependent upon mobile phones, and the radio and television broadcasts have sporadic coverage across the country. Although education is highly valued in Bhutanese society, there are a number of cultural peculiarities that are relevant to the context of the current paper. Firstly, distance or online learning is not common practice in any subject area, and is frequently regarded with suspicion by academic staff, employers, and students alike. This should come as no surprise as this was a common attitude in the West until about twenty years ago (and some may say is still prevalent in subject-specific areas). Secondly, the concept of 'critical thinking' so highly regarded by Western academics, is anathema to the traditional Buddhist educational system, and this actively works against the idea of student-centred learning that values curiosity, rationality, and creative approaches to learning." But on a slightly more positive note, the two centres of teacher education in Bhutan "have recently experimented with Moodle as a tool for teaching and learning, and have expressed interest in other forms of open source software solutions." (2)

References

1. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/access-by-region/asia-and-the-pacific/bhutan/

Reports

2. Mason, Robin and Rennie, Frank. The Development of Distributed Learning Techniques in Bhutan and Nepal. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. Vol.8 No.1 2007 (March) (http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/339/765)

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