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ROUNDTABLE
Multilateral Learning Online:
Can It Solve the Education Crisis in Developing Countries?
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The issues surrounding online education in developing countries—and its practical applications—were discussed with educators at the local, regional and international levels.
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 Bob Moon
Professor of Education
Open University, and Director
Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA)
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 Susan D'Antoni
Head
Virtual Institute of the Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)
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 Stewart Marshall
Director
Distance Education Centre at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Barbados
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 How can the Internet and ICT in general play a role in formal education in developing countries? |
 Bob Moon: Africa has huge teacher shortages with millions of teachers in primary school classrooms who are unqualified. In the next few years as Education For All (EFA) policies are adopted and school fees are abolished, Africa will need almost immediately an additional 2-3 million teachers depending on class sizes. The teacher education establishment in many countries is holding out for three to four year training programs but, because of the shortages, huge numbers of unqualified teachers are being pushed into schools now to fill the spaces. How long can Africa really afford to train teachers when what is needed is emergency, foreshortened training programs to get teachers with basic qualifications into schools?
This is where education for teachers using ICT looks promising. Technology is spreading rapidly across Africa and, in 3-5 years, connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa will be almost universal. In Africa, we don’t have to have the same take-up trajectory for ICT and online learning that exists in the States or Europe or Australasia. Convergence of computers and telephony has already been a major factor in Africa in terms of communication. It may well change all the parameters around which we’ve been thinking about teacher education. There should not be a teacher educator working in a university or teacher college who is not broadband connected in the next few years. ICT might not be getting into primary schools by that time, but teacher educators in higher education institutions should be a priority.
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Susan D’Antoni: There has been much hope and some hyperbole about the potential of e-learning to expand educational opportunity, especially in developing countries where access to higher education is limited. Because it does not require significant building or expansion of physical plant, e-learning is seen as a flexible method of reaching more students in a cost-effective manner. However, high quality e-learning is not inexpensive for the institution to produce and offer, and student support throughout the course is essential.
Turning to the perspective of the potential learner, one can pose four questions that relate to whether e-learning will be useful: Is it accessible? Is it appropriate? Is it accredited? Is it affordable?
For e-learning to have any impact in meeting demand for higher education, it goes without saying that it must be accessible to the learner. There are many measures of Internet connectivity, but no matter which one you use, developing countries will not be at the top. Thus, to extend learning opportunities identifying the technology that will be most accessible to the learner must be a primary consideration. |
Stewart Marshall: The University of the West Indies Distance Education Centre (UWIDEC) – of which I am the Director - serves 16 English-speaking countries in the Caribbean: Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Bahamas; Barbados; Belize; British Virgin Islands; Cayman Islands; Dominica; Grenada; Jamaica; Montserrat; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; St. Vincent and The Grenadines; the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago; and, the Turks and Caicos Islands. Increasingly, information and communication technology (ICT) is being used in distance education to create learning environments in which learners, tutors and learning resources can all be networked, thus giving greater flexibility and knowledge access to learners.
But adoption of the Internet in the Caribbean significantly lags that in the United States and other developed countries. Internet adoption is also uneven within the Caribbean region; for example, in 2003 approximately 37 percent of the inhabitants of Barbados were Internet users compared to six percent for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and only one percent for Haiti and Cuba. In this context, the provision of access, familiarity and a supportive socio-cultural environment are crucial for successful e-learning.
(Also, see the Roundtable Discussion on the Broadband Initiative of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa) |
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| What determines if online educational content is appropriate for a developing country? |
Bob Moon: Since the capacity to train huge numbers of teachers in on-campus, residential-based programs does not exist in Sub-Saharan Africa, I believe that school-based training will be the only way of supporting teachers, providing lots of pre-service training—since there are schools where all the teachers are unqualified—as well as upgrading and in-service training. I’ve been involved with the Digital Education Enhancement Project (DEEP) where we have worked with teachers in South Africa and Egypt for the last three years using hand-held technologies. The response from teachers is very positive; the next phase is to work with larger numbers. My team is working now with the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa which has set up a network of rural schools. We’re developing a strategy for using ICT across the Mandela network. And our TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa) project is exploring the potential of ICT for giving teachers greater access to support and training.
As a result of the Commission for Africa Report, the UK Government has put some backing behind the notion of an Open Primary School for Africa. My university is working with the BBC and other interest groups trying to think laterally about ways to introduce ICT, such as the computer equivalent of interactive radio, directly into primary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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| Susan D’Antoni: The content must be appropriate to the learner’s academic needs and situation. And both the content and presentation should respect the cultural context of the learner. Course subjects and delivery methods appropriate in one context may well not be appropriate in another. |
Stewart Marshall: I have seen many examples of the successful introduction and adoption of the Internet by communities and some common strategies for success seem to emerge from these examples. Pre-eminent amongst these is that collaborative partnerships, social network strategies and the building of social capital at the local level are key issues for successful adoption.
Why is community adoption of the Internet important for e-learning? By providing community Internet access, we are building the Internet access points that the students require for e-learning; by creating Internet knowledgeable communities, in which the use of the Internet in all aspects of life is embedded in the culture, we are building the Internet familiarity required for e-learning; by creating knowledge communities, we are providing the supportive socio-cultural environment required for successful e-learning; by creating multi-functional, cross-sectoral, community access centres (that serve the needs of education, health, government and business) sustainability is assured. It is important to consider the e-learning agenda in the broader context of regional (e.g., Caribbean), national and local community development goals. |
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| Why is accredition of online education so important? |
Susan D’Antoni: In the context of cross-border education, accreditation is a key concern. Accreditation can be seen as the guardian of the quality of the instruction, and of the learner as a consumer. But in many cases, the credential awarded to the learner must be recognized in his or her own country if it is to be useful.
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Stewart Marshall: The globalization and commodification of tertiary education has resulted in an increasing trade in education services. All countries can, in principle, be both providers and consumers. However, given the existence of greater production capacity, powerful alliances, and high volume markets, it seems more likely that the larger developed countries (and to some extent, larger developing countries) rather than small developing countries will become the major providers of education products and services. Small state economies such as those of the Caribbean find it difficult to respond because of their inability to access economies of scale.
There are those who fear that globalised open and distance education will amount to cultural importation/invasion/imperialism. Thus, cross-border e-learning poses an educational and cultural threat to small developing countries and small states. This threat needs to be addressed at organisational, national and regional levels. In order to compete in this rapidly changing tertiary education environment, educational institutions need to ensure that they can demonstrate the quality and portability of their products. National governments need to ensure that their citizens have better information about and are assured of the quality of the educational products they choose. Thus, quality in tertiary education is a national, regional and international issue in the Caribbean. |
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| What issues about affordability of online education ought to be considered? |
Susan D’Antoni:Will the educational offer be affordable to many or just to the fortunate few who can pay the providing institution tuition fees? Because if the increased opportunities offered by e-learning are not affordable in the local context, they will be of little value in expanding the offer of higher education and reducing the digital divide.
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| Susan D’Antoni:The content must be appropriate to the learner’s academic needs and situation. And both the content and presentation should respect the cultural context of the learner. Course subjects and delivery methods appropriate in one context may well not be appropriate in another. |
Stewart Marshall:Although I have not conducted any rigorous research on the issue, I have seen evidence of a correlation between a country providing free higher education and slow adoption of e-learning. But I think this is typically because only traditional face-to-face education is fully-funded in those countries. Thus, it is a function of discriminatory funding policies rather than anything intrinsic about the provision of free higher education. If e-learning (or any other modality of distance education) were to be funded (both for the institution and the student) in the same way as face-to-face, then funding would no longer be a disincentive for institutions and students to engage in e-learning.
(Also, see the Roundtable Discussion on the Broadband Initiative of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa) |
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| How is online education to develop and reach its potential? |
Susan D’Antoni: With the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, IIEP held an international Internet-based discussion forum in 2005 on the topic "Open Educational Resources: open content for higher education". Of the almost 500 participants, half represented developing countries, and of the 90 countries represented, 60 were developing countries.
During the very active forum diThe requested resource (/editor/default/) is not availablescussion, some constraints were identified by developing countries. First, if OER are used in a distance education context, the ICT infrastructure may be inadequate, meaning that access to the Internet is difficult, if not impossible, and certainly costly. Second, materials are being produced in developing countries that could potentially be shared, but they may not be accessible to other users due to lack of awareness or confidence with the technology. Third, materials coming from other countries may need translation, not only in terms of language but also in terms of culture and context. Teaching methodologies normally reflect the culture of the academic who created the materials, and may not be appropriate in another context.
Raising awareness and providing a space for the sharing of information and intelligence about the OER movement is essential to its development. The international community of interest formed by IIEP is an important group that will continue its discussion throughout the year. All documents prepared for and during the forum are available on a web site, and current members of the community are sharing information about the community and resources with their own contacts. Anyone interested in joining the ongoing discussion can do so by sending a request to virtual.university@iiep.unesco.org. The forum documents are available at http://www.unesco.org/iiep/virtualuniversity/forums.php. |
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Stewart Marshall: Some useful things that governments can do are support the use of free and open source software (i.e., free access to use software and adapt its source code) and also promote open resources (i.e., free access to knowledge sources). An example of both can be seen in the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT). This is an e-journal that provides free and open access to all of its content, and it is published using open source software provided freely by the Public Knowledge Project.
There are also some important regional networks that are working toward access and adoption of ICT and the Internet for education in the English-speaking Caribbean. The Caribbean Universities Project for Integrated Distance Education (CUPIDE) is funded by the Japanese Funds-in-Trust for Capacity-building of Human Resources and is a collaborative initiative involving UWI as the implementing agency and the University of Guyana, University Quisqueya (Haiti), Anton de Kom University of Suriname, University of Technology, Jamaica, as co-beneficiaries. The objective of the project is to develop the human resources within the region by enabling each of the five participating universities to develop and deliver quality distance education programmes using information and communication technology (ICT). In this way, the competitiveness of the region in general and the institutions in particular are to be enhanced, participation in the knowledge society increased - not only as users, but also as generators of knowledge - and cost savings realized in the use of the technology for distribution of the course materials and the teaching and administration of programmes.
The CUPIDE project as it was conceived and designed in 2001 did not have the benefit of the commitment of Regional Governments to a connectivity agenda and a holistic Regional approach to the delivery of distance education. This change, coupled with the adoption of Internet and web based technologies as the platform for the delivery of distance education, provided the rationale for the CUPIDE project to be revisited in 2004 with regard to the choices of technologies in delivering on its purpose and to seek the benefits through synergies within the overall umbrella of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) agenda and in particular the Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN) and E-Link Americas.
E-Link Americas is an initiative that was launched by the Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (IAC) which uses economies of scale to pass on low cost connectivity for social development. The operationalization of E-Link Americas in the Caribbean is linked to CKLN, a project which supports the same objectives as CUPIDE, but extends to some thirty-three (33) Caribbean tertiary institutions. Also of importance are the fledgling professional associations: the Caribbean Association for Distance and Open Learning (CARADOL), the Jamaican Association for Distance and Open Learning (JADOL) and the Trinidad and Tobago Distance Learning Association (TTDLA). | |
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 Almost 300 people answered the Development Gateway member survey about uses of online education as a development tool. Read their responses.
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Roundtable from 2006 International Investment Forum for Private Higher Education
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- March 27-29 2006 International Conference on Distance Education, Oman
- April 24-30: Global Campaign for Education Global Action Week
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- April 25-28: Digital Learning Asia 2006, Bangkok, Thailand
- May 24-26 1st International Conference on ICT for Development, Education & Training, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- June 14-17: European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) Conference, Vienna, Austria
- ICEL 2006: The International Conference on e-Learning, Montreal, Quebec
- July 3-7: iEARN World Conference and Youth Summit, Netherlands
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