Teacher education in Bhutan: improving access and quality through the use of ICTs

This paper reports on a research project to implement and evaluate an ICT supported teacher education program in Bhutan. The project involves using ICTs to provide learner support and expand access to a print-based, correspondence style teacher education program (DTEP) that has been delivered by the National Institute for Education, Samste, since 1995. In January 2005 four modules were revised to include ICT support through the use of the Moodle open source learning management system. Later in 2005 the use of ICTs in this program will be evaluated to determine their effectiveness in terms of improving quality and access. This paper discusses the proposed research and some of the local issues that affect the implementation of this project.