The first activity (Kick-off/preparatory workshop) of Asi@Connect WP5 Project “Facilitating Distance Learning using Digital Conferencing Facility” was held in Office of the Higher Education Commission (OHEC), Bangkok, Thailand during 25-27 September 2018. Thailand Research Education Network Association (ThaiREN) was hosted this Kick-off workshop. The project is being implemented by Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BdREN) in collaboration with NORDUnet, Denmark.

The project is aimed at deploying a Digital Conferencing Platform for enhancement of collaboration, distance learning and knowledge sharing that will connect faculties, students, researchers, experts and resources from anyone to anywhere. Deploying the platform within the TEIN itself locally will provide optimal performance and minimize dependency on resources in Europe or the US.

Thirteen participants from the beneficiary country’s Research and Education Networks-Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand attended to the workshop. Two Instructors/Resource persons from NORDUnet, Denmark attended the workshop for appraise the technical design and hardware, software, technical features of the distance learning system and also provide hands-on training on the system.

The objectives of the workshop were

• Interacting with contact personnel of beneficiary countries and principal investigators.
• Sharing requirements of each beneficiary country.
• Evaluating the requirements against available resource.
• Optimizing requirements or management of additional resources to meet the requirements.
• Identifying responsibilities of each beneficiary NREN.
• Preparing a “Road Map” for the whole project.
• Having a hands-on training and real life feel of the platform to be established.