KHON KAEN UNIVERSITY GOES GOOGLE

Located 449 kilometres northeast of Bangkok, Khon Kaen University (KKU) does not see its distance from the capital as a hindrance to promoting innovation and adopting technology. Recently, it became the first the first university in Thailand and in Southeast Asia to ‘Go Google’ through the Google Apps Support Program.

KKU president associate Prof Kittichai Triratanasirichai said that KKU’s mission is to be an international university and be a hub in the northeast for students from overseas. The university has been emphasising IT investment as a vital tool to support education for several years. The latest move is to join hands with Google to roll out the Google App for Education to facilitate learning, with the collaboration of teachers and university staff.

KKU’s mission is to provide technology to facilitate learning for students, teaching for lecturers and working for staff. It connects all 200 buildings throughout the 5,600 rai of the KKU area with wireless connection, 60 access points, allowing students to do online learning and information searching anywhere and anytime. 

The Internet connection, both wired and wireless, allows the university to offer students electronic learning. More than 2,000 subjects are available in the KKU Learning Management System.

“KKU wants to be an international university and ICT is an important tool to assist us achieve the goal. Studying at KKU, student learning will be facilitated by the ICT infrastructure along with the ICT knowledge that is a must and required skill for graduation students,” said Kittichai.

KKU’s vice president of academic and IT, assistant Prof Denpong Soodphakdee, said that KKU’s e-learning system is enabled by the Moodle system, a free Web-based learning management system that allows educators to create effective online learning sites. Google Apps will be integrated into the university’s LMS. 

The 12,000 staff of KKU and the hospital, which includes 2,000 teachers and 10,000 staff, and 43,000 students will be encouraged to use Google Apps in the next three months. Now, around 10,000 users are using Google Apps,” said Denpong.

Apart from the learning benefit, the students can arrange their learning plan such as planning their study time table, check the subjects they have to study and the dates of examinations throughout the semester. This makes it easier for them to manage their learning plan. 

The university can not only save time but also cost when deploying the services to students, teachers, and staff.

“The cost of IT investment is low but there is more efficiency in performing routine tasks and teaching services. In the future, KKU can provide partial distant-learning for graduation students,” said Denpong.

Meanwhile, Surasak Wongratanacheewin, deputy director of Srinagarind Hospital, said that currently about 20 per cent of the Faculty of Medicine is using Google Apps. They are using the apps for some subjects such as anatomy class. The students learn about human anatomy with 3D animation before they learn about the real body in the lab. 

Kanda Runapongsa Saikaew, associate director of the Computer Centre and lecturer at the Department of Computer Engineering, said that the KKU faculty has adopted Google Apps for three years, before the university had encouraged all the faculty and all students, teachers, and staff to use Google App. It helps facilitate learning between students, especially senior students who have to collaborate and do group work, with Google App such as Gmail, Google Site, Hangout, and Google Plus, and that helps them to work together better.

“This department has a total of 400 students, or over 100 students each year. When they are assigned to do group work or a project, they can work together better and teachers can get involved with them closely,” said Kanda.

Samuel Cheung, technical program manager, Emerging Markets

Lead for Google Apps Supporting Programs for EDU (Southeast Asia), said that Google Apps for Education and partnerships with schools and universities in over 146 countries. In 2011, 16 million students used Google Apps for Education to discover, connect, and learn.

“The partnership with KKU is our first large-scale education programme in Southeast Asia and we hope through our continued efforts, we can help raise the level of excellence, awareness, and access in education for future generations of students, teachers and innovators,” said Cheung.

He added that Google Apps for EDU is a collection of free e-mail and open collaboration tools available for teacher, students, classrooms and families around the world, which includes Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Groups.

“Teachers use apps such as Gmail in ways that help facilitate communication and learning, such as writing to a student’s parents in their native language, or allowing student groups to work simultaneously on the same document at the same time. Google+ is also providing new ways for teachers and learners to find and share information and connect with others online,” said Cheung.