The B-learning Uzbekistan Veterinary Network / BUzNet project will be implemented by a consortium of 4 European HEIs and 4 Uzbek HEIs. The general objective of the project is to increase the life standards of common Uzbek people through better veterinary and zootechnical teaching, which will ultimately result in better technical support for local herds’ owners and safer animal products reaching the general society. And this will be accomplished taking into account the local ecological limitations and using advance teaching techniques of practical subjects in veterinary/animal sciences. To do this we must first be sure about what we are dealing with, and so, a series of inquiries and local visits of European experts will be done in order to have a clear idea of the exact Uzbek situation in veterinary farm animal clinic and surgery and milk quality control. Then, a group of Uzbek teachers will be trained in European HEIs in new ways of teaching practical subjects and using B learning strategies to help doing so. Meanwhile, an updating of the present Uzbek curricula and local facilities present in Uzbek HEIs will be done. This way it will be possible to fully implement the new teaching strategies by the third and last year of the project. The core of the project will be the use of a B-learning interface (BLUzVet) that will create a learning community consisting of all members of the project consortium, teachers, students and veterinarians. The information is created by the students during practical classes under teachers supervision, commented by all consortium members and will be used in students’ examinations. In the future this system will be extended to members from other countries and regions. The network formed within this project agglutinates Veterinary HEIs from different backgrounds and will improve the setting of new veterinary, animal production management and milk quality control teaching standards in Uzbekistan and beyond.
The aim of B-learning Uzbekistan Veterinary Network/BUzNet project was to increase life standards of Uzbek people through better veterinary and zootechnical teaching, resulting in better technical support for local herds’ owners and safer animal products reaching the society. This was accomplished taking into account the local ecological limitations and using advanced strategies on teaching practical subjects in veterinary/animal sciences. First a local recognition with a series of inquiries and local visits was made in order to have a clear idea of the exact Uzbek situation in veterinary and milk quality control. A group of Uzbek teachers was trained in EU HEIs in new ways of teaching practical subjects using a contextualized hands-on approach. This was obtained by full immersion of these teachers in the EU teaching environment and by making these teachers produce their one teaching material from the practical cases seen in EU HEIs. An updating of the Uzbek curricula, teaching laboratories, libraries, installing Wi-Fi facilities and providing computers for students use in Uzbek HEIs, was done. The major drawback was the fact that we were unable to put the B-learning strategy in full work. This will be thoroughly explained later on in this report. The actions developed, in a peer-to-peer and very close approach, by all members of the consortium have been fundamental for the remarkable results achieved in this project:-Theoretical and practical training for 5 young teachers from each Uzbek HEI, for a total of 20, who traveled to the 4 EU HEIs. These teachers followed EU teachers and students in their classes, visited farms and laboratories and prepared and presented teaching materials in order to gain full capacity of teaching practical subjects with a contextualized hands-on approach;-Establishment of a computer room for students’ use, together with a WI-FI system in order for all to access the digital world;-Up-grade of libraries with the acquisition of recent reference books in Veterinary Sciences and Dairy Production in order to support and sustain knowledge acquired by young teachers at EU HEIs and also to the students;-Purchase of equipment essential to a hands-on practical teaching. This equipment now allows the reproduction in the classroom of the activities that a veterinarian and a dairy control technician must perform in real life allowing for a contextualize hand-on learning.-Up-date of the older curricula, both in Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnical sciences, into a more modern system, updating curricular contents, bringing new teaching methodologies, increase in practical classes, use of hand-on contextualized learning and decreasing of non-scientific disciplines;Additionally BUzNet resulted in concrete outcomes:-Production of a report “UZBEKISTAN: A REPORT on VETERINAY MEDICAL TEACHING and the PROVISION of VETERINARY SERVICES”. This gave us a clear perspective of the Uzbek livestock sector, and type and organization of veterinary services and teaching and resulted from a field work with visits to Uzbek farms and HEIs by a team of Uzbek and European experts;-Production of a report “UZBEKISTAN: REPORT on ENQUIRIES PROMOTED by BUzNet PROJECT to VETERINARIANS, TEACHERS of VETERINARY SCHOOLS, MILK SECTOR OPERATORS, FARMERS and VETERINARY STUDENTS”. This is based on enquiries (389), to: students (94); veterinarians (45) and food technicians (82); owners and stakeholders of farm animals (84);-A series of Booklets and PPT Presentations produced by the visiting young teachers during their training period in EU HEIs. These were the base for oral presentations performed in order to get them acquired with teaching and presentation techniques but also with novel scientific information.