On September 5, 2022, members of the Consortium met at the UNICEF office in Mongolia to learn about digital transformation projects in education. The meeting was attended by Monkhuzh Badarchin, Program Manager for Education and Nyamhuugin Tserennadmead, Program Specialist for Education.
UNICEF is working hard on digital transformation of education. During the pandemic, the education sector in Mongolia was supported in creating tele-lessons, helping to reach as many children as possible from remote regions of Mongolia, including children from ethnic minorities. To ensure that ethnic minority children are not excluded from the learning process, the tele-lessons were translated into Tuvan and Kazakh, and sign language interpretation was also provided. A UNICEF study of the effectiveness of TV lessons showed that 21% of schoolchildren did not have the opportunity to watch TV lessons due to lack of TV sets, and another 16% did not watch the lessons, even if they had televisions at home. UNICEF staff members said that the work on the creation of TV-lessons continues, but now more attention is paid to the quality, the developers have the task to make the learning process through TV-lessons more interactive and fun for students. Another focus has been the creation of audio lessons that are more like a captivating story told by the teacher. In this way, UNICEF contributes to supporting the development and improvement of the digital platform, making learning material more meaningful, engaging, interactive and personalized for students, also meeting the needs of teachers. UNICEF staff members noted that they see distance learning not only as an alternative or back-up option to ensure continuity of education during emergencies, but also as the need of the hour, while the digital transformation of education offers great opportunities to improve access and quality of education. The material prepared with the support of UNICEF includes 1,600 lessons, 147 textbooks, 2,140 tele-lessons. 104 interactive lessons have been created, 60 more will be added soon, and 90 audio lessons have been added to the national platform (E-content).