 Good morning. First of all, on behalf of Royal University of Bhutan, I would like to thank ALT for inviting us for this conference to remember Professor Robin Mason and to share the educational technology at Royal University of Bhutan. Let me introduce myself. I'm Sonabhenjo, working as a manager for educational technology at Royal University of Bhutan. I've been involved in this educational technology from mid-2010. And before that, I was working as a network administrator or the system administrator, looking after the service networks at the member colleges. So I joined my office in 2005. I'm quite new to this office, although the office itself is the new, the university itself is the new. So I hope that you know her. She is, I mean, Professor Robin Mason and you can see the member for the workshops. And it was unfortunate for me that I didn't get any opportunity to meet her as I was involved in some other projects during the project contributed by her. So she has visited three member colleges at Bhutan. So I'll be discussing more later. So let me give you a brief background on Bhutan. Bhutan is a tiny landlocked country bordered with China towards the north and India towards the southeast, south and west. Ours is the constitution monarchy and we had a landlocked democratic election in March 2008. So we have population with 700,000 and we have a development philosophy called Gross National Happiness initiated by our fourth king. And we are working to pursue those goals. So let me give you a brief background of Royal University of Bhutan. Our Royal University of Bhutan is established, launched in June 2003 through the Royal Charter signed by the His Majesty the Fourth King. And our university is distributed universities with 10 member colleges scattered across the country. We have a central coordinating office, Office of the Vice Chancellor where I'm currently working. All the activities of the member colleges are coordinated through my office, I mean through the Office of the Vice Chancellor. We have around 6000 students in total and 939 staffs including Bhutanese national and expatriates from India and other countries. Also the background of my university and you can see the distribution of the universities. Right in the middle is the coordinating office, Office of the Vice Chancellor. And we have one college which offers degree in indigenous medicine through the local language. And we have one engineering college, two college of education which offers degree in education. And we have one business college and in the extreme east of the country where our professor Robin has visited. She has visited this place, this college provides arts and humanities. Well, let me share some of the contribution by the Ron Mason and her counterpart Frank. We had two projects each with the duration of two years starting from 2005 to 2006, then 2007 to 2008. So first project was commenced from 2005 to 2006 and that project title name was Development and Management of Sustainable System for Distributed Higher Education in Nepal and Bhutan. So the core focus of that project was to gain the experience by the Royal universities from the universities like UHI, Universities of Highland and Islands and Open University. Since UHI has the structure in the sense that the distribution of its member colleges is same like the Bhutan, like our Royal University of Bhutan. So these two universities are using various technology tools to deliver the courses to their students. So we just wanted to gain the experience on how the technologies are being used in those two colleges to deliver the courses. And in this project we have received so many advices on the technology which are suitable for the distributed campuses. And we have conducted a number of workshops, conferences, seminars on the pedagogy, online teaching, select appropriate technology on the distributed university systems. And finally a team from the university has visited the places to study and to have a good practice in the area of sustainable rural education. But unfortunately that sustainable rural education has been looked after by another college. So to be frank I don't know much about this sustainable rural education. Then after the first project, the second project was commenced from 2007 to 2008 and title of that project was EduShare. And in that project we had the partners from Open University, Lewis Castle College, the member of UHI and some Asian University partners like Asian University partners from Turkey, Cambodia, Nepal and Maldives. In that project the quality assurance workshop was conducted in the Sheriffs College, the place that I have shown which is located in eastern part of the Bhutan. And in that workshop what they did was how to validate the courses. So they even did the mock validation during that time. So due to this still the validation process has been followed and is happening twice in a year. So they even developed the online courses for the sustainable rural development. And unfortunately that one also looked after by the College of Natural Resources which offers the degree in agriculture, forestry and animal husbandry. So staff development was also happened in order to introduce the ample program in universities. But unfortunately till that you couldn't launch these programs. But I was informed that by next early 2012 it will be launched. And again the team from university has visited the Open University to study more about this, open learn how the courses, how the technologies are used to deliver the courses or something like that. So after these two projects Professor Robin and Frank published a book on Bhutan, the title Bhutan Ways of Knowing. And it is the collection of articles by the RUB, I should say RUB, Royal University of Bhutan. By the Royal University of Bhutan lectures and the extracts from the interviews with the Bhutanese. So they have written and they published the book on Bhutan Ways of Knowing. Now let me share about the education technology at Royal University of Bhutan. What are the current scenarios, what are the challenges, what are the problems that we are facing. As is I should say 100% Instructors Centre traditional classroom face to face type education. Through that project the concept of education technology understood. However we could not implement those educational technology due to lack of resources. And on top of that our staff capability is very limited. So in 2006 we had a project funded by Danida to connect all the universities, member colleges through white area network. So during that time we connected all the member colleges through white area network using IPBN technology. But with the speed of 512 kbps, you can imagine with the 512 kbps how we can share the resources through that type of network. So however we are waiting for our government, our government is laying the power optics throughout the country. So we are just waiting for that. Hopefully we can upgrade our existing bandwidth. So we are being challenged by the internet bandwidth. Bandwidth is very poor, not in the university but as a country as a whole bandwidth is very poor. So in 2010, mid-2010 we have invited, I mean we hired a consultant from Sri Lanka University of Kolombo School of Computing. We hired the consultant from Sri Lanka to install the module open source software. Not only install, how to make our staff used to this module features. So we conducted series of training. First we trained the VLE IT administrator. Second VLE coordinators. Third VLE administrator coordinators and the Dean academic affairs. And finally we trained all the lectures. All the lectures in the sense we have trained around 380 lectures throughout the university. Then due to the challenge faced by our bandwidth, we installed individual module in the individual locations to overcome those challenges. However, again we don't have any content. We launched the module on 11th May 2011 with the aim of catering to both online as well as face to face, the blended type. But we are being challenged by the content. We don't have capacity to convert all the analog textbook into the e-content. So we are being challenged by those contents and the usability of the technology. We trained our faculties how to use module features and at the end of the day. No one is using. No one is using. I was just calling my friends what you are doing with these modules. Then my friend used to say that they don't know. During this training also I had a difficult time with the faculties saying that I told them that why not start with simple learning objects like PowerPoint, PDF. Then their immediate response was it will take 10 years. I don't know. So we are being challenged by the usability. We are being challenged by the e-content. So in order to overcome those challenges, we would like to have network and partnership in those areas. Developing a system so that we can upgrade the capabilities of our faculties to change those mindset, the lecture based mindset and make them use the education technology. Because if they are not using the module system then it becomes no difference with the traditional one. And as I have said that our country is mountainous due to the time, locations and in my country to travel 180 kilometers it takes 8 hours by bus. So in such scenarios there are many inservice candidates who wish to upgrade their qualifications, their knowledge, their skills. So we would like to have expertise in those areas how to deliver the courses to such interested learners, students to upgrade their knowledge, qualifications and skills. Yes there are many open educational resources but in this open educational resources available I see two challenges, major two challenges. One is how to integrate those open educational resources into our existing infrastructures, into our existing modules. After integration, how we will make our faculties to use those OERs, the usability point is they are being challenged. So we need to have some sort of mechanism to make our faculties to use those OERs. And to make our inservice candidates or other people who wish to upgrade their knowledge to study their choice program, we would like to design, develop and deliver the courses in order to fulfill the needs and requirements of such type of candidates. So Royal University is desperately looking for support and expertise in those areas initially. If you have any recommendations to be made to our educational technology. Very much for interesting talk and I can identify with many of the issues you have there back here as well. We now have time for questions both from people here and online. We'll start with people who are physically here. I'm interested in the process of working with your staff when the Moodle was installed etc etc. About how much time did the person, people that were there spend with your staff showing them the system? And did they do educational background work showing the output that would be the case for students? Should it be utilized properly? I'm just wondering what the order of time was there. The consultant from UCAC, Sri Lanka, they conducted, they visited our university six times. But unfortunately they didn't touch the students part. They just touched the faculty's part because in the beginning we have to train our faculties. If faculty is not trained then we cannot think of the students. So initially they started the system study throughout the colleges. Then they conducted the trainings. Then they identified the persons who will be involved in this Moodle. So like we have three persons identified, one is really IT administrator, one is really academic coordinators and one is academic deans so that we can move forward our Moodle. Then we train those three types of people and finally we train all the faculties. But set part is out of 380 faculties that we have trained, only 5% of them are using, only 5%. So I don't know what is the reason behind but I'm in the process of finding out because before coming here I've distributed the questionnaires saying that how many hits do you get? So I've received two respondents. They said that per day the number of hits on the VLE site is greater than 0 less than 5. So that's the situation right now in our country. Anyway the UCAC, the higher consultant, they didn't touch on the student part. They just trained the faculties. Have you explored social networking at all for students and staff sharing ideas? Social networking. Yes. You mean me? I mean the universe. Let me give you an example. Just now the Facebook is very popular in our country and as I've shared that we are being challenged by bandwidth. There are more towards the mafia games. So it's our direction from the government saying that during office hours you're not allowed to, you have to block the social networking. So but right now you just provide them during the lunch hours, after office hours only. So social networking we cannot right now because when they started using the social network, they don't give chance to other person to use if they're using the college computers. So they are going on, keep on chatting on the social network. So right now we are controlling the social network usage. I'm just thinking, I didn't put the proposal but I'm just thinking how to make those faculties to use our module system. Maybe through recognitions. Maybe some other means but through recognition also we need some expert because if we tell faculties to use module system then what they'll do is, if you tell them to use module system so that we can recognize those who are using, then what they'll do is they'll keep on uploading the PDF files, Microsoft Word files, which is no different than the traditional type. So if we don't recognize such type then it's also not fair because they're using the module. So we need to have some process mechanism. So I'm thinking on this how to do it. So we require the expertise on drawing up those mechanisms. Thank you. One of the factors that seems to influence the take up by staff with technology in the UK, and we've been doing some work on this, is the use of technology by students and involving students as role models in the use of technology. Tom Cochran over here has been doing some very interesting work at UniTech in Auckland around, if you like, the developed use of technology by staff and learners in collaboration using what Tom calls our technology stewards. It seems to me one of the problems you have and that we've been researching in the UK is that technologies that create turbulence in the lives of staff because they're not used to working with it or they don't have daily access to the technology create the problems and maybe a chat with Tom at the end of the session might give you some really useful insights into the way that they've been working in Auckland. So that would be helpful to Roy University of Tana. I was going to make a similar comment that's just been made that used the students as the drivers but also that if perhaps you could get somebody to do a sabbatical or something like that, somebody with those skills at your university in some way that was culturally acceptable. A fellow academic leading might be more accepted. I was just going to say what you've described does sound to me like the process that probably most institutions in the UK have been through and probably many institutions in the UK were at the point you're at 10 or 15 years ago and have experienced exactly what you've described in the early days. So it does feel to me that there are people with experience of having gone through that who would hopefully be able to give pointers as to ways of moving forward. I would just add to that that I think that only in the UK we have many academics who do use their BLE but do just put documents in it and we're struggling here to get them to engage more actively than just put documents in it still. If there are no more questions I'd like to thank very much again Tana for coming all this way and Gary has talked to us. Thank you very much.