In the fall of 2014, Douglas Johnson from the University of Colorado in Boulder Colorado, was awarded a Fulbright Specialist award to go to the Institute of Language and Culture Studies (ILCS) in Taktse, Bhutan. The primary goal was to work with the Information and Computer Technology (ICT) staff to improve their capacity in the installation, maintenance, monitoring and configuration of computer systems. Another goal of the visit was to work with ILCS lecturers to implement computer technology in the classroom. Through a generous donation by the i>clicker Company and the Physics Department at the University of Colorado, he was able to bring 30 i>clickers and 2 i>clicker bases as a gift to ILCS. The i>clicker provides user-friendly technology that enables instructors and students to interact dynamically in minutes. For more information about i>clicker technology and use, please visit the i>clicker home page and the Science Education Institute at the University of Colorado.
Working with a team of lecturers and ICT staff:
It is important to understand a little about Bhutanese culture. The Bhutanese are a very proud and extremely polite people. Many Bhutanese are shy in comparison to "westerns". Bhutan is the most Buddhist country in the world; a philosophy based on kindness and compassion. This results in shyness in the classroom and often it is difficult for lecturers to get Bhutanese students to participate in class. One observation by Jude Polsky was that students at ILCS almost never applaud lecturers. In every class where the i>clickers were used, the students applauded enthusiastically. One evening, a few days prior to writing this note, Douglas Johnson was having dinner in a local restaurant in Taktse. A group of students were sitting at the table next to him. One of the students said to Douglas that he had visited their class and demonstrated i>clickers. When asked what they thought about i>clickers, the student responded, "We are usually very shy about answering questions in class. With i>clickers we have the courage to participate."
In a letter to the i>clicker company, director Lungtaen Gyatso of ILCS notes:
Dear Ms. Martin,
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to you for your
generous donation to our college of 30 i>clickers. This is a
technology that I had't even heard of before Douglas Johnson
introduced it to us. Who, then, could have imagined how well
it suits our students and enables them to come forward with
their thoughts and opinions when they would normally
abstain.
....
We will now have to consider ways in which we can bring
these i>clickers to many more of our classrooms. Thank you
for the wonderful gift of learning, both for our students
and for our instructors, who have been exposed to an
entirely new way of teaching and engaging students.
The i>clicker team from ILCS is hoping to publish our initial findings and also hope to be able to conduct more systematic and in-depth studies of the use of i>clickers in a Buddhist culture. Almost all, if not all, current research has been done in "western" cultures. We hope to be able to test the "western" findings and we expect that not all of the results will hold in a Buddhist culture.
We are not positive, but we believe that this is the first use of i>clickers in Bhutan and perhaps the first findings of the use of i>clickers in a Buddhist culture. We would like to thank the i>clicker company, the University of Colorado and the J. William Fulbright Program for their support.
