Organization: Education Center Bilim–Central Asia

Countries involved: Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

Note: Conditional approval. Only the needs assessment component of this project received funding. The assessment will look into what courses could be of interest to the potential target group and what IT infrastructure exists for distance learning. The revised project will be resubmitted to the RE:FINE committee for final approval.

The Virtual Learning Space of the Central Asia Education Cooperation Network (CA ECN VLS) will offer specifically designed short online courses and open, online resources for self study to professionals and civil society leaders in education. The courses will be mainly based on OSI program products as well as materials developed by ESP Budapest, and also rely on a range of best practice cases in the region of CEE/fSU. The courses will be delivered in Russian, thus potential participants can also be from the whole region of the former Soviet Union. In the future, the courses will also be delivered in the national languages of the Central Asian countries.

The project outcomes are: a group of 15 education professionals and civil society leaders will be trained in ICT-based teaching and course development; a number (to be specified in the revised proposal) of courses will be delivered to interested learners; open resources for self-study will be developed in connection to each course and published on the www.educasia.net portal.

Kazakhstan  |  $146,050  |  June 2005 - December 2006