Virtual Interactive Classroom (VIC) using Mobile Technology at the Bangladesh Open University (BOU)

Bangladesh Open University (BOU) is the only national institution in Bangladesh which is catering distance education in the country. It has extensive network through out the country to provide readily accessible contact points for its learners. After passing of 15 years since its inception, BOU has lagged behind in using technologies. In consideration of its limit to conventional method in teaching, a project was undertaken to test the effectiveness and viability of interactive television (TV) and mobile’s Short Message Service (sms) classroom and explore the use of available and appropriate technologies to provide ICT enabled distance tuition. In this project, the mobile technology’s sms along with perceived live telecast was used to create ideal classroom situation for distance learning through the Question Based Participation (QBP) technique. The existing videos of BOU TV programmes were made interactive using this technologies and technique. The existing BOU TV programme and interactive version of the same were showed to same learners of BOU to evaluate its effectiveness. It is found from the study that this interactive virtual classroom significantly perform well in teaching than BOU video programmes (noninteractive) which is used at present. This paper will describe the idea of virtual classroom setting and how this is effective for distance teaching in Bangladesh. How far this idea is realistic, appropriate, cost effective and user friendly in rural Bangladesh. What will be the impact of this interactive classroom on the Distance teaching/learning mode of education in the Country. INTRODUCTION Bangladesh Open University (BOU) is the only open institution in Bangladesh. It was established in 1992 under the Act No. 38 of the Bangladesh Parliament. The objectives of BOU are “expand all levels of education, knowledge and science by a diversity of means, including the use of any communication technology to improve the quality of education and to provide opportunities for education to the general public through mass-orientation of education and to create efficient manpower by improving the quality of education in general” (Bangladesh Gazette, 1992). It uses tutorial classes, print materials, audio tapes and RadioTV broadcasting of lectures for delivering its programmes. It has a wide network consisting of 12 Regional Resources Centres (RRCs), 80 Coordinating Offices (TCs) and more than 1000 Coordination Offices (COs) through out the country. BOU has a sophisticated media centre with the facility of airing. The total number of students is about 0.5 million (BOU website). At BOU, tutorial classes are conducted by hired teachers from Universities, Colleges, Institutes, Government Offices, and High Schools according to the programmes. Usually, tutorial classes are held twice a month. The concept of tutoring at distance education is introduced to provide counseling to the students how do they study in distance and to provide guidelines in using of distance education materials and attending Radio/TV programmes including admission, examination and other related information. But, due to absent of interactions in other media of learning at BOU, learners demand lectures and interactions instead of counseling as stated above. As a result, tutorial classes at BOU seem like a lecturing on the subject matter rather than counseling. Moreover, the learners demand more tutorial sessions or interactions. Therefore, BOU is spending a considerable amount of money for its tutorial services towards the quality education. The lectures airing by Radio/TV is only delivered by BOU academics and other subject specialists from other institutions. The time slots for Radio and TV is average 30 minutes for each medium per day. This is absolutely insufficient for broadcasting lectures for its 23 programmes. The following table shows the transmission of radio/TV programmes at BOU (2001-2005): Number of broadcast Radio & TV programmes at BOU The data shows that average 13 TV lectures and 16 Radio lectures are aired per month for its 23 programmes. This is very low number of airing programmes in terms of effective delivery of teaching. Contrarary, this lectures delivered through Bangladesh TV (national television) is one way delivery. There is no interaction between teachers and learners. There are still questions how many learners attend the lectures? How do they enjoy the lectures? Is it effective? Are there any suggestions/comments from the learners to improve the delivery? Bangladesh is a country in the world to have exemplified a model for rural access to mobile phones through out the country quickly acclaimed initiatives of Grameen Phone Ltd. followed by other mobile companies (Hossain et al., 2005). According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BRTC), there are 32.5 million mobile subscribers till July 2007 in the country. The number of mobile phone subscribers of different provider is appended below to show the flow of increasing rate of mobile users. (Subscribers in millions) Operators May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 Grameen Phone Ltd.(GP) 13.24 13.97 15.73 TMIB (Aktel) 5.55 5.05 6.67 Sheba Telecom Ltd.(Banglalink) 5.53 6.04 6.61 PBTL(City Cell) 1.27 1.30 1.31 Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd. (Teletalk) 0.87 0.89 0.91 Warid Telecom Int. (Warid) 0.20 0.47 1.14 Total 26.26 27.72 32.37 Number of mobile phone subscribers Schools TV Radio School of Education 235 465 School of Social, Science Humanities and Language 69 117