Yerevan /Mediamax/. Armenian Minister of Education and Science Levon Mkrtchyan said today that digital or distance learning should become an integral part and an applied method in the country’s schools from the 1st of next September.

The Minister made this statement at a conference dedicated to organization of distance learning.

“We began testing the distance learning methodology, trying to specify the formats through application of various technical methods each week in order to understand how we can introduce components of distance learning into the subject curriculum,” the Minister said.

According to Levon Mkrtchyan, the main problem is providing large-scale application of ICT in education, as more than 1400 schools operating in Armenia are on different levels of education and equipment quality, therefore leading schools should take it upon them to be the moving power of the process.

“As the first step we have to create a digital platform for all subjects, using the resources gathered in leading schools. The second step is that we reach a state where teachers are able to use these digital resources in full and apply them in teaching. It is very important that introduction of this system becomes exemplary from the point of efficiency, so we should review completely the methodology and programs of retraining for teachers with that goal in mind,” the Minister observed.

National Center of Educational Technologies Director Artak Poghosyan presented the results of the evaluation of digital provision in general education schools, which indicats that Armenian schools have 20 000 computers at the moment, about 20% of them being essentially old.

According to this research, the teachers’ motivation to use ICT is very low. In general, 500-600 teachers actively apply telecommunication methods in the learning process.

Levon Mkrtchyan instructed to create a work group, which will be given two weeks to prepare the timetable of events for introduction of digital learning in Armenian schools by September 1.