In 2004, I worked on a major project, mainly in Mongolia, for the World Bank. I had previously some strong connections with the World Bank. Debra Beattie was a leader of the World Bank Institute, an in-house training group. Under Debra’s leadership, several World Bank employees had taken the Technology-Based Distributed Learning Certificate that I had developed at UBC. Another good colleague of mine, Michael Foley from Ireland, was the head of distributed learning at the World Bank. As well as sharing several conference platforms, he, my wife, and I had toured the bars on Bourbon Street during a conference in New Orleans in 2001. I had also in 2003 been on a panel of experts at a World Bank workshop in Washington, DC. The World Bank had approached me on account of the research I had been doing into the costs and benefits of different technologies for distributed learning (later published in Bates, 2011).
The World Bank project in Mongolia was particularly spectacular. The World Bank had secured funding to support rural distance education in Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia. The mission, led by Robert McGough, was to help governments in developing countries to assess and plan low-cost, appropriate distributed learning approaches for isolated, nomadic, rural and district communities. With some input from me, the World Bank wanted to develop…
Source: Tony Bates - Online Learning — Read the full article on the original site ↗