Monitoring mission in Khovd province, Mongolia
On 24 – 28 August 2019, the Mongolian project team members conducted a monitoring mission for teacher training in Khovd Province. Monitoring team members included the Mongolian National University of Education (MNUE) professional team (Prof. Jadambaa), and the Tokyo Tech team (Prof. Yamaguchi, Prof. Takada, Ms. Origilmma (project coordinator), Ms. Ishino (researcher), Mr. Hirai (doctoral student), and Ms. Mai (master student)), participated in this training.
There are two purposes of this training: 1) to present and discuss on the first draft of the digital teacher training materials produced by teachers in Khovd province. The digital training materials will be improved reflecting the feedbacks from the discussion; 2) to conduct the training of using and developing the interactive materials.
Fifty lower secondary school teachers participated in this training, including teachers from six subjects, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Geography, History and Social Science, Design and Technology. Besides, two teachers of Biology subject voluntarily participated in the training.
The digital evaluation sessions of the training consisted of the following four activities. First, teachers presented the first draft of the digital training materials subject by subject. Second, teachers evaluated the digital training materials by answering the evaluation survey sheets. Third, teachers divided as subject groups did group discussions on the draft materials and presented their feedbacks to the other teachers as a group. Four, the Tokyo Tech team, Khovd Education and Culture Department (ECD), and MNUE professional team gave their feedback. As a result, the draft materials were evaluated for 12 domains, including clarity of goals and objectives, degree of interest, voice quality, and so on. The highlight points and improvement recommendations were also discussed and given to each of the groups.
The interactive training sessions were organized based on the training guidelines developed by the Tokyo Tech team as follows. First, the basic concept and the procedures to produce the interactive training materials were introduced by the Tokyo Tech team and MNUE professional team. Second, teachers were guided step by step to learn to develop the interactive materials, including the installation of the necessary software, XAMPP and Xerte, and the development of the example questions, multiple choice question, gap filling question, and category question. Third, teachers worked as subject groups and develop their own interactive materials based on the Mongolian teacher training guidelines. Fourth, teachers presented their interactive materials and exchange knowledge and feedbacks with each other. At the end, all of the teachers successfully run the interactive training materials on their computers. Most of the teachers achieved the installation. Five of the subject teams completed developing five or more interactive quizzes. Teachers highly appreciated the interactive material, regarding it as a good assessment tool as well as the innovative methodology for teaching.
On the third day of the training, the Tokyo Tech team visited the school in the Uench soum, which is one of the most rural soums in the Khovd province. The school training managers and teachers shared their ideas about integrating ICT in education with the project team members of included their approaches to supporting teachers’ development, the challenges and opportunities for teachers to develop digital teaching materials and use ICT in teaching, to name a few.
During the travel in the Uench soum, the Khovd ECD kindly arranged the visit to the Kharuul Ovoo, the watermelon plantation, Kazakh family, and the rock wall with the ancient painting. Kharuul Ovoo is a great stone complex on the top of the Jargalant mountain with many legends and stories. All the members climbed up the mountain and enjoyed the grand scenery up of the mountain.
Through the monitoring mission in Khovd, the project team members were impressed by the enthusiasm of teachers to obtain knowledge and develop ICT skills. They also enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the special and delicious local food.
