IIOE National Center Pakistan at UET Lahore Participated in the Launch Ceremony of IIOE Pilot Project in Mongolia

Blended Learning Capacity Building for STEM Teachers, an IIOE pilot project in Mongolia, had its formal launch event on September 22, 2022, which was jointly hosted by UNESCO-ICHEI and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology (MUST). International experts and academics in the fields of blended learning and teacher professional development, as well as representatives from UNESCO, the Mongolian Ministry of Education and Science, the Mongolian National Commission for UNESCO, MUST, and other Mongolian universities, were present for the project’s launch.

The initiative also underwent peer assessment by professionals from around the world. Prof. Waqar Mahmood, Director of the Al-Khwarizmi Institute of Computer Science at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, Pakistan, and Coordinator of the IIOE National Center in Pakistan, joined other experts in recognising the initiative of UNESCO-ICHEI to launch the IIOE pilot project at partner institutions to address the key issues of digitization in higher education and respond to national priorities. He also anticipated positive results from the project.

Prof. LI Ming expressed his appreciation for everyone’s attention to and commitment to the Mongolian pilot project in his concluding remarks. The pilot design has taken into account the characteristics and needs of Mongolia and MUST, which can result in some customised and localised experiences that can be shared and scaled up in the future. He noted that improving the digital competency of university teachers in blended learning is the core and foundation of the digital transformation of higher education. According to him, UNESCO-ICHEI will collaborate with IIOE’s partner institutions across the world to create the IIOE Development Report 2019–2022, which will assess the successful blended learning experiences and practises of partner institutions and look at how IIOE can better support partner universities’ digital transformation.

Arooj Zeb