1. DISTANCE EDUCATION AND ICT DEVELOPMENT IN MONGOLIA
Ministry of Science, Technology, Education and Culture of Mongolia
L.Orgilmaa

2. National policies, strategies and programs
The Mongolian ICT sector has a long history of development. In 1994 with introduction of First Internet Service Provider in Mongolia – Datacom Co. Ltd.
Since 1994, the first serious attempt to address ICT policy issue in Mongolia was undertaken in 1999, when the First National ICT Summit was organized and the “ICT Vision-2010” policy document developed with contributions of representatives of government organizations, business sector and civil society
The ICT Vision-2010 has been adopted by Parliament of Mongolia in 2000 as a leading policy document of ICT development in Mongolia.

3. National policies, strategies and programs
The mission of ICT Vision-2010 is to “develop a knowledge-based society and to improve the quality of people’s lives.”
The ICT Vision 2010 has three major components: government –legislation framework; business-economy framework and people-society framework.
the goal of the Vision-2010 is to “create a favorable environment for Mongolian citizens to communicate freely among themselves and with the world community, ensure opportunities for their equal and active participation in social life, and improve quality of people’s lives.”

4. National policies, strategies and programs
In 2002, Government of Mongolia has approved the Distance Education National Policy. The main purpose lies in establishing Distance Education National System which will help to increase formal and non formal education service access, quality, efficiency and to develop life skill through access to life long learning.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science, Technology, Education and Culture (MOSTEC) has developed Vision-2010 to implement ICT in education sector, followed by Action plan which was approved by Minister of Science, Technology, Education and Culture in The Vision of MOSTEC has 4 major components: training, hardware, teaching staff and information ware.

5. National policies, strategies and programs
As for legal environment for ICT development, there are few laws already developed and adopted, such as telecommunications law of 1995 (amended in 2001) and law on radio frequency. There are minor amendments made to some laws such as patent law, Civil Code, technology transfer law and others.
Recently, the Ministry of Infrastructure developed draft IT law, which has been discussed among stakeholders

6. Current level of ICT access and use in education
basic education (primary/secondary) Within informatics subject curriculum, the pupils are taught on logistics, programming languages and application based on Microsoft Office suite.
vocational education
teacher training: The teacher training aspect can be addressed in two ways: pre-service and in-service.
non-formal education. The non-formal education is past years have been extensively using TV or radio tools rather than of computers, since there was little penetration of computers especially in countryside, where the recipients of non-formal education were residing.

7. Illustrative examples of major initiatives
A project of Internet and Information Center, NGO with support of IDRC of Canada in 1998 with aim to provide first web-based information for teachers and pupils.
A project of Mongolian Foundation for Open Society (Soros Foundation) to provide web-portal for teachers in secondary schools with the purpose of providing room for public discussion, sharing knowledge and experience in the development of curriculum materials, teaching methodology and others.

8. Examples of training being provided
Education Sector Development programme of ADB
Cyber aimag project of MFOS (Soros foundation)
Internet for School project of MFOS (Soros foundation)
Project of Indian Government
Sakura project of JICA
Open Web Center project of MFOS (Soros foundation)

9. Even though, an extensive number of training were conducted within different projects and initiatives, still there is a great demand and need for training from basic to advanced levels among informatics and non-informatics teachers, pupils, NGOs and others.
Moreover, although the comprehensive IT in education strategy is developed and adopted by Government of Mongolia, almost each of above mentioned projects and activities represent pilot projects, which requires further replication of successful projects within strategy.

10. Constraints re the use of ICT in the country
There are a number of constraints in ICT development in the country, each of these needs to be addressed within the following framework.
Policy
Infrastructure
Human Development and capacity building
Content and learning materials

11. Analyses
There is a need of introduction of nation-wide pro-computer literacy program targeted for teachers, pupils, staff of schools and parents which has a component of introducing management information system in education with specific focus on end-user and ease of use
The IT training should be combined with applied training, for example, use of computers for writing essays, reports and presentations, or use computer to analyse data of physics test, etc.

12. Analyses
There is a need for on-line and off-line Mongolian language content development as well as development of manuals, guidelines, teachers and students books, course materials, on-line and off-line help and support desks, etc.