ePolicy In Practice -  How is a University in Bangladesh Becoming Digital?

- By Dr. Pär-Ola Zander - Department Of Communication and Psychology

Aalborg University, Denmark

Background for ePolicyInPractice

�  May 2011, Aalborg University & signed a MoU with University of Dhaka

�  This project is deepening this partnership further

�  I will present an overview of what we plan to do

Research Idea - Domain �  A lot of efforts are put into Digital Bangladesh,

vision 2021 �  Implementation

�  Evaluation

�  Yet no one knows the effects of Digital Bangladesh on the institutional level in higher education �  Therein lies our contribution �  Broad approach: Neither research on hardware, nor

software, nor humans, but their interaction

ePolicyInPractice �  Discover and document

novel ways for students to learn through ICT

�  Discover novel ways of administrating university through ICT

Developed University

An exploration of the mechanisms of digitalization -  How is the policy ‘felt’? -  What can be generalized to other universities?

e-Didactics and PBL �  Teacher and student-driven innovation (user-driven

innovation)

�  How? �  Course design workshops and needs analysis

�  Explore “post-lecture” approaches in Bangladesh

�  Infuse well-tried “western” practices to these lead users

�  Not “best practice”, but “best inspiration”

E-Infrastructure �  Infrastructure

�  Communications

�  Case processing (Booking resources, promotion, travel expenses…)

�  Computerization of infrastructure is possible! �  Strictly technically. No problem.

�  Challenge: Change mindsets, find smart workflows

Infrastructure

Researching Infrastructure �  Why?

�  Teaching is not independent from its infrastructure

�  Signal? How are teachers’ motivations to adopt ICT affected by the state of administration?

�  Agility: Changes in curriculum, teaching forms

�  The interesting question is not if this must change �  What happens when it is changed? �  Systematize local knowledge �  Investigate by participatory scenario creation and

need analysis

Future �  2011, The forthcoming days:

�  Workshops, interviews, observations �  Generating motivation

�  2012: Workshops on how the identified ideas can be supported and realized

�  Scope of project depends on financial situation �  Money currently bottleneck.

Resources

�  AAU resources (time)

�  DU resources (time & facilities)

�  Pending funding applications (DFID, DANIDA, EU)