KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

After Ed wrote the book “Thriving with Co-Inception Leadership”, Dhanapati Subedi, head of the Department of Educational Leadership at the School of Education, invited Ed to speak to his classes multiple times.  Students included school principals, teachers and consultants in the field of education. After this, the School of Education and Digital Bridges 4 Nepal decided to “co-incept” together, and were able to start a memorandum of understanding in November of 2019. ​

After we formed our local NGO in early 2020, our newly formed team in Nepal, led by Mr. Jhabindra Subedi, was able to sign the Memorandum of Understanding to install our next Collaborative Learning Environment Center in the fall of 2020. Despite pandemic restrictions, we were able to move forward with this project. The Dean of the School of Education, Mr Mahesh Parajuli, was a very big supporter of our project, and the School of Education became recognized in these challenging times as a progressive, innovative team as well. The delivery of the equipment and its installation fortunately happened right before the new lockdown as the Covid variant became widespread. 

One of the interesting add-on to the CLEC was the remote controlled camera and the smart TV allowing the CLEC to operate with students in the room, and on a visual platform, allowing students to both see themselves in the room and on the screens. The addition of the mobile podium allowed the teacher to also move around the room, engaging students in a more deliberate way. The configuration of the room was alas pushing for learning at each table and between tables. ​

We did the first use and tests of it in the Fall of 2020, all in a remote fashion. Then the school had to close again to in person courses, and it took a good year to adapt the CLEC. In 2021, as all our projects were losing some steam, we were not able to initiate a study with the School of Education about the impact of our CLEC. As we completed one installation in the Manang District in December of 2021, and we hav 2 advanced projects, one in Mustang district, one in Gorkha, we will resume this part of our MoU with them in the spring of 2022. ​