E-learning Prospects for the Developing World

Can e-learning actually provide a level playing field for developing countries in the area of education? So far, it has not, but the obstacles are perhaps diminishing. 1. E-LEARNING FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD 1.1 EDUCATION AS ANTIDOTE TO POVERTY “Education is the only antidote to poverty” – A.R. Bawa, Dep Minister Education, Ghana (Bawa, 2003). While cheap, universally available education is desirable everywhere, it is most desperately needed in the developing world, especially in rural areas where access is most limited. (As Rifkin (2000) notes, less than half the people in the world have ever made a phone call.) But is education really the antidote to world poverty? Is education all that is needed? For most people in developing countries, education is not a goal in itself, but is instrumental to other needs. In addition to the direct costs of education, there are also opportunity cost – time lost for other kinds of employment. In many poor countries, this applies even to children, for they are also working assets of the family, e.g. to work the fields. The benefits of sending children to school must be seen to clearly outweigh the costs. These benefits are seen most clearly as offering new economic opportunities, which is itself an educational challenge. 1.2 COMMODITIZING EDUCATION In a recent speech, the Minister of Education of Jamaica called for the “commodization” of education (Henry-Wilson 2003). By that, she focused on the notion that it would be easily accessible to all – accessible in the following senses: • accessible in the physical sense physically available • accessible in the economic sense easily affordable (if not free) • accessible in the cognitive sense – that it is understandable Elaborating on this notion, John Daniel, Assistant Director General for Education at UNESCO made these remarks (Daniel, 2002): “Commoditization...is a key process for bringing prosperity to ordinary people by giving them greater freedom and wider choice. Products that were once hand crafted and expensive become standardized, mass produced and inexpensive. ... By developing courseware for large numbers of students [educational institutions] can justify the investment required to produce high quality learning materials at low unit cost. Such materials can be used successfully outside their country of origin after local adaptation and translation. Commoditizing education need not mean commercializing education. The educational community should adopt the model of the open source software movement. We can imagine a future in which teachers and institutions make their courseware and learning materials freely available on the web. Anyone else can translate and adapt them for local use provided they make their new version freely available too.” In this paper we expand on several of the themes introduced in this quotation: how e-learning technologies can commoditize course content, making it re-usable and widely available, at very low marginal cost. By adding the notion of componentization to e-learning, one can actually deliver e-learning that is also customized to specific instruction needs, and individual learning patterns. A further notion that we will explore is the potential analogy to open source development, and non-commercial models for developing e-learning course content. 1.3 A VISION OF E-LEARNING FOR DEVELOPMENT Like most new technologies, e-learning has had initial impact mainly in the industrialized countries. The developing world so far lacks the infrastructure and availability of computer resources to make serious investment in e-learning developments. When governments in poor countries face shortages of food and medicine, investment in education may be seen as a luxury. Around the world, education is normally considered as a responsibility of governments. Every government has a Ministry of Education. The implicit assumption is that educational developments are done “topdown”, from national priorities and programs, extending eventually to the local level. In many countries, public education is also complemented by a private sector educational institutions, such as private universities and private secondary schools. Another variation that is appearing in many developing countries, are educational initiatives that are partnership effort between the government and certain private companies. The companies are typically large technology-based multi-nationals, such as Cisco, and Micosoft. These public-private partnerships have had some success, especially in areas of technical training. While the commercial linkages may be criticized as motivated by globalization interests of the companies (providing lower cost trained labor supply), they also have the clear advantage of linking the educational time investment of individuals to a broadened range of economic opportunities (Kersemaekers, 2002) There are also examples of educational models that develop “bottomup”, without major investments or direction from governments or corporations. Significant among these is Committee for Democratization of Information Technology (CDI), a non-profit, non-governmental organization started 1995, to “promote social inclusion, by using information technology as a citizens rights and developing tool”. [#cdi]. CDI works in partnership with low-income community centers and special needs individuals, such as physically handicapped, psychiatric patients, homeless children, and prisoners. The design of CDI has some remarkable merits. Most impressive is the degree of motivation and involvement it achieves among its students. Another stunning characteristic is its “viral growth” where schools tend to replicate into hundreds more. An additional noteworthy characteristic is that the growth of CDI schools is done on a minimal budget, with little or no outside investment. However, it will be noted that the education made available from CDI is basic computer literacy, and a sense of familiarity with the potential applicability of the technology, coupled with aspects of citizenship and social responsibility. CDI does not compete with conventional schooling in offering the broad range of subjects normally associated with primary and secondary education. The notion in this paper is to try to carve out a kind of “middle-out” alternative, that on the one hand links to the broad scope of topics of conventional education, but on the other is responsive to the needs and interests of the local populace. 1.4 PROVIDING THE TELECOM INFRASTRUCTURE One of the immediate concerns in discussions about e-learning in developing countries are the technical requirements of providing computer technology and telecommunications access. As is widely recognized, these are necessary but not sufficient conditions (Warschauer 2003). Thanks to widespread defacto standardization of operating systems (Windows, Linux), there is already relatively easy portability of software among hardware platforms. As the earlier CDI example illustrates, it is possible to assemble workable computer labs through heterogenous collections of computer hardware acquired by donations and creative reengineering. A more serious challenge, especially for remote areas, is Internet access. Like previous generations of telephone technologies, the bulk of telecom infrastructure is built from cable networks. These have relatively easy availability in the cities, but the fan-out from these hubs to remote areas can leave whole regions without access. However, new possibilities are emerging via satellite (Global VSAT Forum, 2002). Stimulated by the demand for entertainment, satellite TV has been expanding quickly to remote areas. With relatively modest extensions, this same satellite infrastructure can now offer Internet access. For instance, with an initial equipment investment of about $1000 and monthly connect charges at about $100, one can now get a 500 kb connection in most of South America and soon Africa [#earthlink_vsat_internet]. (For instance, satellite access to the Internet is now available in the Amazon jungle (SpaceDaily 2002)). While these prices may out of reach for most individuals in developing countries, they might be sufficiently economical to support a remote cyber-café. 1.5 DEMAND AND SUPPLY FOR E-LEARNING The link between educational investment and economic opportunity has always been tenuous, both at strategic level and at the individual level. Strategically, the more successful examples of economic development, e.g. Singapore and South Korea, have also made heavy investments in education, especially at university levels. However, just where to make those investments is less clear, since building educational infrastructure coupled with the educational process itself often moves more slowly than market demands. At the individual level, the issue is where to specialize. If one is beginning a four-year university degree, the employment market could shift substantially in the intervening time. For individuals in developing countries, the problem may be the more basic one not of which area to specialize in, but whether to pursue education at all. The choice is more difficult because the relative personal costs are much higher. For a poor young man in a rural area, the cost of secondary education may that the family loses its strongest worker for half the time. For a woman (e.g. in Muslim countries), there may be additional stigmata. These relative personal costs are even higher for tertiary education, which may require leaving the home altogether to attend university in a faraway city. These kinds of constraints are strong arguments for e-learning applications. E-learning can offer anywhere anytime access to education on a self-paced program, that can be customized to individual backgrounds and needs. A farm worker can take courses at night. A father whose education stopped with grade school, can take remedial courses without embarrassment. A woman can take special interest courses in the private context of a computer screen. Moreover, the same elearning facilities can help individuals search for employment opportunities, and the specific knowledge packages that might be relevant for those opportunities. This is a kind of “just-in-time” education. It is easy to visualize the wide range of benefits that e-learning could offer for people in developing countries. There are however, three main resource constraints: • financial -these people are poor, and can only pay very small amounts for education beyond what is provided free by the government. • telecom – in most developing countries, telecom infrastructure is lacking outside the big cities. • content -the content for on-line courses needs to be developed to fit the local context. While some subjects, e. g. algebra, may be globally generic, nearly any topic involving social aspects (e.g. management) has cultural dependencies, that need to be contextualized. Presentation styles may also need local adaptation. Obviously, course content needs to be offered in the local language. Of these, perhaps the most challenging is the development of localized courseware content. This needs to be developed, or at least adapted, locally – both to make it locally relevant, but also to make it economically viable, with costs of production that are compatible with the revenues that the local market can produce. 2. E-LEARNING UNIVERSITIES AND INSTITUTIONS 2.1 MIT OPEN COURSEWARE The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open CourseWare project is among the boldest of university initiatives, with the goal to make the teaching materials used in all its courses freely available to the world by the fall of 2007. [#mit_open_courseware] Course materials for some several hundred courses are already available. This is not, however, an elearning initiative in that no interactivity is offered, either with software or with the human instructors. Also, the materials are offered only in English. 2.2 CMU OPEN LEARNING INITIATIVE Another leading institutional initiative for e-learning is the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. Distinctive about this initiative is applying the long and deep research tradition of this university in areas of cognitive science and human-computer interactions to innovative designs for e-learning to produce “highly effective, intellectually challenging sequences of instruction that reflect not just cutting edge technology but the most compelling ideas about pedagogy and content of introductory college level instruction.” [#cmu_open_learning]. 2.3 UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX Various universities now offer on-line degree programs [#online_degrees] . A leader here is the University of Phoenix, which currently offers on-line degree programs at bachelors, masters and even doctorate levels [#univ_phoenix]. These virtual universities are changing the nature of university education, and of competition among universities. However, these are primarily oriented towards the educational markets in the industrialized countries (mainly USA). The content of the programs is not adapted to the needs of developing countries, and the costs, though lower than traditional education, are still too high. The current course offerings are primarily in English. There are also various private companies that offer education and training in developing countries. 2.4 CISCO NETWORKING ACADEMY A major player here is the Cisco Networking Academy Program which offers e-learning about Internet technology skills. Launched in 1997, the Cisco Networking Academy Program has evolved from a high school network support curriculum to a worldwide educational program to advance the Internet Economy. Their online education includes Webbased content, online assessment, student performance tracking, hands-onlabs, instructor training and support, and preparation for industry standard certifications. [#cisco-academies]. At present, there are 10,032 Cisco Networking Academies and more than 269,722 Networking Academy students worldwide.