STANDING BY PONDS
John Baggaley
Professor of Educational Technology
Athabasca University, Canada
Excerpted with permission from the Editorial of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 9, No 3 (2008).
www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/588/1135
You can’t step in the same water twice, said Heraclitus. He may have been correct in the literal sense, but even Heraclitus must have had those déjà vu moments when his life seemed to be repeating itself. Standing by a pond while making a video download recalled identical experiences filming by ponds in 1975 and 1996, and prompted some thoughts on how little institutional policy ever really changes in the world of media-based education.
In the mid-90s, television was on its way out as a medium of choice in North American and European education. It had been struggling for credibility for almost as long as it had been in use. The Open University in the U.K., for example, started broadcasting course materials on television in the early ‘70s, in the middle of the night and often for surprisingly small student enrolments of a few dozen. In 1978 the cost-effectiveness of this effort was questioned at a London University conference with the provocative title “Is anybody there?” It turned out they weren’t, at least not in justifiable numbers, and that many courses could have been delivered to the students more efficiently in the mail on audio-tapes.
Since the late ‘90s, the same question has been asked about the World Wide Web, at least in regions where only tiny proportions of the population have Internet access. Turning a blind eye to the inaccessibility hurdle, developing world institutions have pressed on developing web-based ODL materials anyway, with an eager “If we build it, they will come” attitude. They appear motivated to adopt the most modern techniques available, regardless, and are encouraged in this by Western distance educators who apparently regard media older than the web as strange and obsolete. But “Is anyone there, or likely to be so?” Actually not for the foreseeable future.
Web-based education has polarised world society into elite and have-not groups far more than TV and radio ever did; and its adoption in the developing world appears oblivious to the fact that today’s students would derive greater benefit from media that are actually available to them. Are the hundreds of millions of would-be students who cannot access the Internet a kind of “untouchable” class, whose problems and needs have become invisible?
Fortunately, in India and other developing countries, the needs of disadvantaged students remain very much in focus, and offer inspiration for all educators. For example, the University estimated by that bastion of source credibility, Wikipedia (“mega-universities” entry), as having the seventh largest student enrolment in the world, is named after Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who devoted his life to erasing untouchability from Indian society and to implementing open learning methods for the benefit of all. Today Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University maintains its commitment to these ideals by preserving far-reaching uses of radio, TV, and audio/videotape, while other Asian universities struggle and fail to harness more elitist forms of Internet-based education.
Having recently returned to Canada from a four-year tour of distance education initiatives in 21 Asia-Pacific countries, I deeply sympathise with institutions in their attempts to harness eLearning – but I especially sympathise with their students.
Consider, for example, this cri de coeur by a student recounted by Stephen Asunka (2008). The student is pleading with the instructor for an extension to an online project deadline. “This is because my project has been affected very much by the power fluctuation we are experiencing in both on campus and at home...This has not only caused low performance (but) I am facing some sort of a psychological battle at the moment, because I really did take the paper.” As Asunka stresses, many students are loath to make such pleas, and only do so “in their moments of desperation”.
How long will we continue to ignore such bewilderment and frustration on the part of our students, while seeking to implement novel but patently inappropriate technologies purely for the sake of it? And how long will we ignore the obvious fact that it is the blind eye being turned to Internet inaccessibility by institutions and funding agencies that is failing the students, rather than an intrinsic lack of motivation and application on the students’ part?
Institutional and agency support for Internet-based methods is not just a matter of attempting to think ahead to a day when the new technologies will have become appropriate for all, but a culpable and dishonest disregard for the present, and for the students’ needs within it.
Reference
Asunka, S. (2008) Online learning in higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ghanaian University students’ experiences and perceptions. International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning 9(3). Retrieved from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/586/1130
Pullquote:
Web-based education has polarised world society into elite and have-not groups far more than TV and radio ever did