Open Institute

The Open Institute is a non-governmental and not-for-profit organization that envisions Cambodia as a country in which widespread access to high quality education, information, communications and technology lead to a more developed and just society. Our mission is to help improve the results of early-grade education in Cambodia, and to ensure that high-quality learning materials are accessible to all Cambodian school students through the Internet.

From 2017 to 2021 Open Institute has completed its shift from being a technology-for-development organization to concentrate only on education.

At present Open Institute collaborates with the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) and the UNESCO/STEPCam programme to improve the teaching of mathematics in grades 1 to 3. Open Institute has led the development of new MoEYS Teaching and Learning materials packages for these courses, and it is supporting MoEYS in its deployment in five provinces. Open Institute is also collaborating with the MoEYS department of teacher training and UNESCO/StepCam to adapt the Math Methodology curriculum to the new packages being created, and to provide training in pedagogy to Teacher educators.

We also collaborates with the MoEYS department of Information Technology, supported by UNICEF, to ensure easy access by parents and students to all digital materials (classroom videos, Maths animation videos, worksheet, workbooks, etc.) that students can use at home to complement their education. The resources include several thousand videos that cover all classes taught in grade 1 to 9, as well as in grade 12.

As a strategic activity of Open Institute, the organization is developing and disseminating Koun Sva Chhlat (Clever Little Monkey), a collection of workbooks that help parents support their children's education and improve their results in grades 1 to 3. These workbooks, developed together with MoEYS, and accepted as part of its core resources for learning how to write Khmer and for maths in grades 1 to 3, are fully aligned with the program, textbooks, and teacher guides, providing practice to be done at home every day, even if the parents are not familiar with the content they have to study, or with the way of teaching it. The books can either be downloaded from the Internet and printed, or bought at bookstores at a very low price. In 2021, in response to Covid-19, UNICEF has printed and distributed these workbooks to all grade 1 and grade 2 children in Cambodia (more than 750.000 children). Open Institute continues developing new titles, hoping to be able to support - in the near future - the first three years for Khmer and the all of primary for Maths.

In addition, working with UNESCO and MoEYS, Open Institute is developing the Happy Maths collection of videos. The collection includes over 500 videos that review, using animation, each Maths topic taught in grades 1 to 3, and demonstrates how to do an example of how to solve each exercise included in the Koun Sva Chhlat workbooks.

Read about our past programs...