Final workshop at Talas State University 11-12 April 2019

The final workshop was visited by students and staff of the Talas State University and city residents of Talas as well. On the opening ceremony of the workshop, there were high-ranked guests from institutions such as Ministry of Education of Kyrgyz Republik, Talas Regional Government, Talas Regional Hospital and Partner Universities represented by their rectors. The national coordinator of KyrMedu project, Mr. Nurlan Omurov, made a presentation about the goals, activities, consortium and results of the project for the whole period of the project lifetime. The workshop was covered by the national and local TV and Radio channels. The University TV and magazine also reported on the final workshop. The results of the project was also covered by the newspaper of the Ministry of Education called Kutbilim on two pages.

On the second part of the workshop, the project coordinators, rectors and the representative of the NEO Erasmus+ discussed the results of the projects at a round table. The Partner Universities presented the implementation of the the project at their universities and for the consortium. One important factor of the success of the project was the well-coordinated teamwork. The project coordinators reported on the work packages they were assigned to. Following is the allocation of the work packages among the Partner Universities:

• KSUCTA: Project implementation on national level and establishment of Cloud Lab
• KSTU: Moodle learning portal and establishment of Hub for storage and processing medical data
• KSMA: Medical Laboratory
• OSU: Education process and recruitment of students for the KyrMedu study programme
• NSU: Dissemination work
• IKSU: Elaboration of lab instructions and guidelines for practical teaching
• TalSU: Cooperation with stakeholders

Ms. Berdikulova from NEO Erasmus+ Bishkek gave her feedback on the basis of the presentations and made suggestions for improvement of some aspects of the project management.

• First of all, Erasmus+ was convinced by the good results of the project and that the overall goals of the project have been achieved in the timeframe of the project.
• She observed that in the project, experts and professors from Universities were actively engaged and this was a absolute advantage of the project consotrium. Although the project language is English, and the management of the project and coordnators communicated in English, the main technical part of the project implementation such as study programme, learning materials and publications were done in Russian. This way all partners were able to understand and fully collaborate on the project. The English translation was done only on demand for the European partners and Erasmus+ in Brussels. This extra mile of providing translators for the communication and doing the main work in Russian was a good decision.
• It was also very well received that the universities are targeting the schools in their regions in order to acquire new students and promote the study programme at schools.
• Further, it was also acknowledged that in the scope of the project the qualification frameworks for the study programme “Biomedical Engineering and Health Care Informatics” was developed and the project coordinators and experts have contributed to this success. This output has an impact on national qualification frameworks in Kyrgyzstan, as it will serve as an orientation for future study programmes.
• The team-work of the Partner Universities was also acknowledged as a good result. The partners have coordinated the team work and allocated the work packages. Although there were some concrete numbers missing such as:
  • How many contracts or MoI have been signed during the project
  • How many students are enrolled in each university
  • How many students will pass internships and where

Nevertheless, there were also some remarks and recommendations:

• The project is poorly positioned online, in fact, Erasmus+ NEO has the only platform where they can get the information regarding the progress and prospectives of the project. And this is the www.kyrmedu.org And they noticed that the websie doesn’t offer such kind of information. Therefor, they recommended to put on the website of the project following plans (dissemination plan, sustainibility plan, activity plan and quality assurance plan) in order to navigate the visitor:
  • What the project consortium has been up to
  • Where is the project going
  • What are the upcoming activities
  • How the project results and impact will be disseminated

• Erasmus+ recognizes the fact that the three-year-commitment agreement with the teacher is a good basis for cooperation but it is still not assuring the long-term sustainibility.

She also announced, that the actual monitoring is planed for November 2019. They will scrutinize the impact of the project results on the Universities and on Kyrgyzstan at large.

On the second day of the workshop, the participants visited the Talas Regional Hospital and Talas Regional Special Hospital. The goal fo these visits was to show the participants of the workshop the real environment and conditions of collaboration for student practica and internships. Talas State University has signed agreements of cooperation with these institutions.