Objectives

Identification of perceived needs and constraints in the target countries

In the knowledge society, knowledge is a prerequisite for economic growth and development. The education and training needs of citizens, companies and countries are growing continuously. Virtual learning will be a fundamental learning strategy for initial education, as well as for updating of the population’s knowledge and skills in the economy of the Information age. The present education and training systems are not capable of providing the flexibility, efficiency and quality that are needed.

For the purpose of this project, considering their differences in the IT&C development, not all countries in the region will be involved in this pilot initiative. We will limit to the following countries: Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand.

For all of those countries, education is considered to be a key and strategic tool for their national development. Even though there are differences in the scale and magnitude of the problem but providing equal learning opportunity to all citizens and improving the quality of education at all level and stream of education in order to improve the quality of their human resources, to respond to the keep changing and increasing demands of society, are two of their current pressing needs. Geographic, economic and time constraints have made open and distance learning a promising and potential approach to deal with these needs. They all see that mastering in IT&C, lifelong learner and learning society are prerequisites for surviving in the coming digital economic world.

Target groups

The main target group of the project would be adult learners of SEAMEO countries that are subject specialist and trainers in the selected SEAMEO Centres. Other trainers and educationist in other SEAMEO Centres and educational institutions in SEAMEO Member Countries would also benefit from the project through peer training amongst SEAMEO Centres and programmes conducted by these SEAMEO Centres for participants of all SEAMEO Member Countries, which currently is one of the major activities of SEAMEO.

The target groups in Southeast Asia can be divided into long-term and immediate beneficiaries. The former comprises the educated citizens of Southeast Asia working in the public, private and educational sectors with access to the Internet. The number is estimated at about 20% of those with Internet connection (11 million) or at least 2 million people. The immediate beneficiaries would be those who normally receive IT&C training from the

SEAMEO Centres and groups to be selected for the Project. The direct beneficiaries of the projects are the SEAMEO Centres’ staff who are involved with the project and the participants in the pilot which are selected key education practitioners in the target countries, the profile of which are highlighted above. The programme developed will have direct impact on them while they familiarize with the environment and technique of Virtual Learning. The number of the direct beneficiaries will be the number of participants involved in the pilot plus the number of professional staff in the SEAMEO Centres involved in the project either as partners or associates (SEAMOLEC, VOCTECH, INNOTECH, BIOTROP, TROPMED, RIHED, and RECSAM). Based on the target SEAMEO Member Countries selected, the following organizations of SEAMEO can be selected to be involved in the project. They are SEAMOLEC (Indonesia), VOCTECH (Brunei), INNOTECH (Philippines), RECSAM (Malaysia), RIHED (Thailand) and SEARCA (Philippines). If the centres could identify 100 participants to be involved in the Pilot, then a total number of 600 will be involved directly with the Pilot.

The indirect beneficiaries are those who will gain from the project once the pilot groups are ready to reuse the modules developed for training in their respective organizations in the respective countries. These would include faculty members of universities, the host institutions of the SEAMEO Centres, high school teachers, and trainers of training institutions. Their educational background would be at least Bachelors degree; at least 30 years’ old of both sexes; with three years’ working experience: having a good to excellent command of the English language, computer literate, with good word processing ability, and familiar with the Internet. Taking large nations such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines whose education workforce under the Ministry of Education may number up to about 400,000 per country, it could be estimated that the number of indirect beneficiaries, not including students, could amount to about 2.1 Million (including about 50,000 from Brunei).

Reasons for the selection of the groups

The reasons for the selection of the groups for immediate benefit in SEA is that they represent a broad range of perspective leaders in the own fields of occupation who would acquire the pedagogical knowledge in IT&C and become the disseminators of the knowledge and skills to others throughout the region. The learning citizens expected to benefit in the long run form the core of personnel in the governments, business and education fields who have major roles to play in the development of IT&C and knowledge society. The activities are geared towards enhancing capacity building in the Southeast Asian region.

Currently, the countries in SEAMEO that would be suitable to be pilot centres of the project are SEAMEO Member Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines. This is based on two factors:

The level of Internet connectivity of these countries which to date indicates a reasonably low cost of Internet access.

The availability of Internet access to SEAMEO Centres operating in these countries.

These SEAMEO Member Countries should be considered as the main participants of the pilot-testing group leaving behind the other SEAMEO Member Countries to be the recipient of the final solutions that was finally developed and considered suitable to be applied to the Southeast Asian region.

Relevance of the Project to the EC Programme’s objectives

The project involves intensive and close co-operation between Southeast Asia through SEAMEO, which has the largest educational network in the region, and five European institutions with experiences of virtual campuses and online courses spread throughout Europe. The partnership will provide e-learning solutions appropriate for Southeast Asian environment. The adaptation of European IT&C technology and standards to IT&C Southeast Asian experiences and possibilities and educational needs will strengthen the Southeast Asian countries in their efforts to address the challenges and opportunities offered by globalisation.

In this context, this project is based in the mutual interest (i.e. two-way), Asian and European partners for creating an environment favourable of co-operation by promoting the development of a Southeast Asia Virtual Learning Model, taking advantage of the experience and know-how of the institution’s partners. The exchange of information and knowledge about the different systems is very relevant for the project. It contributes to the overall objectives of the European Commission, established in Lisbon, March 2000 in the aspect of Lifelong Learning. The open virtual and distance learning will increase the capacity of learning citizens to play a full and active role in society and develop their capacities; it will improve the employability by providing them new skills. The activities proposed in this project have been developed in order to achieve innovative results in the field of ODL (Open Distance Learning).

Relevance of the Project to the priorities of the Programme

This project intends to liaise Southeast Asian countries with European technology and IT&C Initiatives and will contribute to relevance of the objective of the programme by increasing the mutual understanding on IT&C learning systems in both continents and, at the same time, to increase the presence of European technologies in Southeast Asia through the adaptation and implementation of UOC virtual learning environment and the adoption of an standard compatible with European systems and regulations. It will contribute also to strengthen the links between the two areas starting a long-term co-operation that wants to go further of this project by searching and defining future ways of co-operation in e-learning.

At the same time, this project will be integrated in an actually on-going European research project lead by the UOC, called MetaCampus. This project is funded by the Five Framework Programme RTD (IST Programme). The MetaCampus aims at building a marketplace for life-long learning. It will build a 3rd generation portal to help citizens in their selection and purchase of those resources best fitting their life-long learning needs, preferences and profiles. This will be done with two principal objectives: (1) To facilitate the Southeast Asian contribution at European research on IT solution as a first step to its participation on the Six Research and Technology Development Framework Programme and (2) To take advantage off a better understanding of Southeast Asian needs and requirements for the adaptation of its marketplace thinking in a dissemination strategic plan in the participating Southeast Asian countries.