The COMPETEN-SEA project is a Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE) project funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission. The main objective of the COMPETEN-SEA project is to enable best South-East Asian Universities to develop a new kind of accessible, affordable, high quality and effective educational services to various groups of population now excluded from traditional educational outreach. The MOOC technology was chosen as the tool most promising and suitable for the region with its particular characteristics (growing population dispersed across thousands of islands and separated by thousands of kilometres, extremely high growth of ICT penetration enabling modern ICT-based education, world-class academic staff in best local Universities, etc.). The first attempts to develop local MOOCs confirm the demand and impact, as well as the challenge. The European capacities, technologies and experiences can and shall help to meet those technological and pedagogical challenges faced by local Universities. During the panel, the project members will report on progress towards the development of open courses for these stakeholders taking into account the national policy environments of the participating countries in Southeast Asia. A special focus will be given to the challenge of reaching remote communities with open technologies and open content.
