February 2023 - Works on ETSI Online Learning Platform Underway

Since the addition of science education into the core monastic curriculum of the Tibetan monastic academic centers in 2014, ETSI has been supporting the collaborating monasteries and nunneries in setting up and expanding science labs at their respective institutions. Right from the start, the ETSI understood the necessity of including objective experiments, critical observations and analytic investigation in the monastics’ science education so that the students learn and engage with a different way of perceiving, analyzing, and understanding the physical world.  

Last winter, ETSI’s Dr. Kelsey Gray, Senior Instructional Content Developer, worked together with the ETSI Graduate Science Instructors to create a standardized list for suggested science laboratory inventories at each monastic institution. Based on the experience of each science instructor at their respective institutions and on the expertise of Dr. Gray, the collaborative meetings successfully identified essential teaching and research tools and finalized a standardized lab inventory list that will provide guidance for the effective use of funds provided by ETSI at each science center.  

Dr.  Gray also met with representatives from WisdmLabs, a web development company with expertise in building online learning management systems, to initiate design and creation of the online version of ETSI’s well-established six-year science curriculum. The meeting took place at Drepung Loseling Meditation and Science Center in south India, allowing the company representatives to have first-hand experience of ETSI in-person classes. The productive meeting resulted in establishing clear objectives and features for the online courses including short video lectures, select excerpts from primers, slide decks, and interactive components.  

Forest Oliver, ETSI’s newly hired staff, will support Dr. Gray in this project.