In my opening position I made the case that the traditional tools of policy and financing can help develop and sustain Opportunity and Capacity but that they are not effective tools for addressing Motivation.

And it is this final component – Motivation – that I believe is the key to sustainability in ICT4E initiatives. In order to be successful and sustainable these initiatives must meet the needs and desires of the ultimate end users. They must “nourish” teachers and students. They must be sustaining before they can be sustainable.

We can find the evidence to show that non-financial motivators lead to better performance (for example, see “Health worker motivation in Africa: the role of non-financial incentives and human resource management tools” but intuitively we know this to be true. We all can easily recall situations in which we have spent more time and effort on a project we weren’t being paid for or that wasn’t deemed a priority by our supervisors or leadership.

We do this because we are motivated. And in our development context, we need look no further than the global explosion in mobile technology and services for examples of people’s willingness to devote significant percentages of household income on connectivity – whether to support income generation and entrepreneurship or to strengthen family and community ties.

So how does one ensure from the very beginning that they’re designing an ICT4E project that is sustaining and that meets the needs and desires – the motivations – of teachers and students?

Talking w/students @ KSDACON

Good design starts with analysis

Any standard design process – architectural, instructional, policy, product, software – starts with analysis. This up-front analysis needs to produce a clear and shared understanding of the ultimate goals of the project and the context in which it will be carried out.

The context in an ICT4E initiative obviously includes the political, financial and technological environments but it also includes the cultural environment. And one needs to understand individual attitudes, beliefs, interests, needs and desires not only as they apply directly to technology but also in relation to their work and how all of this impacts their personal lives, too.

So what’s the easiest way to elicit information about individual motivations? Just ask and observe them directly, of course!

At Jhpiego we have developed a comprehensive, holistic process and related set of tools that help us conduct what we call a Learning Technology Readiness Assessment. We use this assessment to explore the people, processes and technologies in place in an educational setting at the outset of any ICT4E project. And there are a number of other tools available for gathering similar information including:

• The UNESCO Bangkok Performance Indicators on ICT for Education,
• the National Educational Technology Standards developed by the International Society for Technology in Education
• and the Minimum Standards for Teaching – Learning Technology from the Queensland Department of Education and Training.

It is important to note that while these tools have been designed to gauge technology literacy and to understand how people interact with technology on a daily basis – whether for formal learning or personal use – they also aim to uncover individual attitudes towards technology.

Turning data into design and implementation

With this information at hand one is now empowered to design a technology-supported intervention that will help to achieve project goals and will do so in a manner that is sustaining and also sustainable. To make this clearer, let me share an example – one based on a specific project in a single country, but one that is fairly common – from my own work in sub-Saharan Africa over the last year.

The challenge: Students being prepared for a job in healthcare receive a mix of classroom instruction, practice in a skills lab using anatomical models, and clinical exposure through a practicum. Unfortunately, even after extensive lecture and skills lab practice, students feel underprepared for their clinical experience. Furthermore, when they arrive at the clinical site they find that what they learned in the classroom and skills lab is not consistent with clinical realities.

Some important findings from the assessment:

1. Most students describe themselves as visual learners – they want to “see” what they are learning about.
2. Most lecturers have experienced multimedia and technology-assisted learning as part of their continuing medical education, found it useful and engaging, and are interested in learning how to develop similar materials themselves.
3. The IT staff purchased a digital camera but the lecturers and clinical staff don’t know it’s there and even if they did they wouldn’t know how to use it.
4. Almost all lecturers and clinical staff have mobile phones capable of capturing images, audio and video.

A potential solution: Provide short, targeted training for faculty, clinical preceptors and IT staff (and even students) that focuses on how to take a decent photograph and record good audio and video using the devices – digital cameras and mobile phones – they already own and have easy access to. As part of that training, provide clear examples of how these devices could be used to capture useful content in the clinical setting – ensuring that issues of consent are addressed properly, of course. Once they know how to use the devices and when they might be most effectively used to capture content, show them how these multimedia materials can then be integrated into the learning process in the classroom, skills lab and clinical settings.

This is just a simple example, and I could have provided many others, but hopefully it shows how an understanding of the project context can lead to the design of an ICT4E intervention that is both sustaining and sustainable. It meets the needs and desires of the students by providing a glimpse into the clinical setting, builds on previous experience and stated interest of the lecturers and clinical staff, and takes advantage of technology that already exists and is immediately accessible.

ICT4E can’t be regime change

I began this post with a quote from Dick Gordon about the difficulties of regime change. Sometimes changing behaviors and processes in well-established education and training systems can be just as challenging. But if we look close enough we will find that there are opportunities to leverage what already exists and to tap into personal motivations in order to meet our objectives. And when we do we will significantly increase the likelihood that we will be successful and that the processes we help to establish will be long-lasting.

Full disclosure: I am actually in the process of developing the type of learning technology workshop that I describe here and will be delivering it at a number of sites in a handful of countries next year.

Is this really affordable for Manipur state?

Let’s put those numbers in perspective first. The total budget for the Manipur state school education is Rs 6,000 lakhs (around $12 million). That is, state expenditure on school education is $5 per capita for the budget year 2009-10.

Assuming that about 40 percent of the state population falls in the school-going age group, per student state spending on education is around $12 this year. These numbers are fairly representative for the various Indian states. Compare that to what the state is paying for each XO laptop: $300.

The news report says that “initiative is basically for effective education, teaching and self-learning by students.” Accepting for the moment that the initiative does indeed achieve its stated goals, it has to be admitted that at best it amounts to a small experiment – 1,000 students equipped with a laptop from an estimated student population of 1 million students.

That’s about 0.1percent of the whole student body. Even if the entire education budget were to be allocated to buying laptops – which is clearly impossible – only about 40,000 students (or 4 percent of the total) would get enhanced education. The rest of 96 percent will get no support at all.

Using laptops – even the low-priced $300 XO laptop – is clearly a non-starter for the Manipal state education system. The money for actually implementing the program on any appreciable scale simply does not exist. At best this initiative is an experiment which could indicate that it is possible for increased funding to improve educational outcomes – but that has never really been in doubt.

The Manipal story is instructive. I am not arguing that ICT for education is a meaningless concept in struggling economies. I believe that technology has a critical role to play in making education cheaper, effective and accessible for the poor. I also believe that the cost-benefit calculations will work out in favour of using technology. That test is the first test of sustainability – that over the relevant period, the benefits exceed the costs.

What they are attempting in Manipal would at best raise the peak performance of the education system but will do nothing to raise – and indeed it may even lower – the average level of the system. This is not sustainable in any sense of the word.

Another point to note from the Manipal case is that if the education budget could somehow be expanded from $12 million to say about $300 million, perhaps they could afford universal use of laptops. But $12 billion is the total annual allocation for India’s education – a population of 1.2 billion people, with about 500 million in the school-going age.

So the question is how to determine the sustainable and appropriate use of ICT in education. I think that the answer may lie in looking around in domains other than education.

If someone were to ask, “what is ‘sustainability’ in ICT for ‘X’ ?” where X can be anything from banking, retailing, manufacturing, agriculture, aviation, etc? Should ICT be used in X, and if so, to what extent is answered by those who are in the X business. Businesses that make the right choices subject to hard budget constraints survive. There is no controversy about which ICT tools to use and how much of the budget to allocate to them because the system eliminates wasters.

In a similar sense, if educational systems were held to a “survival in the marketplace” criterion, the system will soon enough figure out what ICT tools to use given the hard budget constraints. Sustainability of ICT use would be a natural consequence of the sustainability of the education system.

So when considering what sustainability means in the context of Information and Communication Technology for Education (ICT4E) I find myself wanting first to understand what it means for something – anything – to be sustainable. I’m not sure if what we had while I was growing up was a Merriam-Webster dictionary, but this is what that venerable publication offers up:

sustainable – capable of being sustained

As you can see, that definition isn’t very helpful, but if we dig a little deeper we get (among other definitions):

sustain – keep up, prolong

So something that is sustainable can be kept up or prolonged. This definition is consistent with the common understanding of sustainability in development programs. Generally, one of the explicit goals of such programs is to establish a system – security, governmental, financial, healthcare – that is capable of continuing to function effectively after external support has been diminished or withdrawn.

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Opportunity, Capacity, Motivation

But before we get to what it means for an ICT4E program to be sustainable I’d like to unpack this idea of sustainability just a little bit more and consider what the necessary elements are of an effective system. After all, as Wayan points out in his introduction, we’re working within an “educational ecosystem,” a complex web of interconnected people and processes.

In order to do that I’d like to draw on a framework from a completely different area, but one that I think will help to structure this discussion. It’s not perfect, but it will help establish my main point. The framework is a general one used in developing human resources for health (HRH) – an area I’m familiar with given my work at Jhpiego – and it’s pretty basic. In order to produce and maintain effective human resources you need to have an enabling environment that includes the opportunity to provide services, competent human resource capacity and motivation.

• Opportunity: Service providers need to have the chance to provide the services they’re expected to (this is particularly important in a task-shifting setting where one cadre will be taking on responsibilities normally associated with another). This is also extended to include things like physical infrastructure and commodities. It’s hard to do your job at all, let alone well, if there’s nowhere to do it and you lack the necessary tools.
• Capacity: Service providers will also need education or training to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to perform their jobs to at least safe, beginning-level competency.
• Motivation: Service providers, like the rest of us, need to have a reason to use the new competencies they’ve developed and continue doing their job, day after day, and do it well.

At this point you’re probably wondering, “When is this guy going to start talking about ICT4E?” Well, now I think we’re ready. So let’s unwind. What does it look like if we use the Opportunity, Capacity & Motivation framework in the context of ICT4E?

• Opportunity: “Service providers” – teachers, faculty, preceptors, etc. – need to have the chance to make use of and integrate ICT into the learning process. In support of that, the necessary infrastructure needs to be in place including power, hardware and software. Depending on the program, there might also be a need for networking and/or Internet connectivity. And the providers need to have sufficient access to the resources.
• Capacity: Service providers also need to be competent and comfortable in the use of ICT for the development, packaging and delivery of learning content and for supporting learning activities. In addition, and just as importantly, there needs to be support in place for the providers – this could be local ICT staff, shared staff across sites, or even external consultants.
• Motivation: Service providers need to have a reason to integrate ICT into the learning process. For example, they may feel that the technology can help better educate or train learners.

But as I mentioned above, this analogy to human capacity development is imperfect. The main reason: it focuses on the “providers” and does not include the “consumers.” The consumers in ICT4E are the learners. But we could still apply the Opportunity, Capacity & Motivation framework to them and the details would be largely the same. The consumers need to have access to the infrastructure and opportunities to use it; possess the ability to make effective use of ICT and have support in doing so; and be motivated to participate.

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Sustainable ICT4E Systems

Now that we know what elements are necessary to have an effective ICT4E system, how can we ensure that it’s a sustainable system, one that can be kept up or prolonged? The first two things that come to mind are policy and financing – both of which can be applied at the national as well as the local, institutional level.

At the national level, the Ministry of Education – or other Ministries, for example the Ministry of Health in the context of healthcare education and training – can develop and adopt policies that encourage the use and integration of ICT in education and training programs. The appropriate focus at this level is on large infrastructure projects and capacity development.

In addition, existing or newly created bodies can concentrate on curriculum development and providing guidance for the integration of ICT at the level of instruction. Funding to support initial implementations in alignment with these policies could then be secured and maintained through any number of mechanisms: taxation, tariffs, bi/multilateral agreements, development loans, etc.

At the institutional level, school policies can be adopted and procedures put in place that are consistent with those policies and guidelines instituted at the national level by the appropriate Ministries and national boards and bodies. And use of the infrastructure developed through national level initiatives can be integrated directly into the learning process. Additional funding for ongoing support of the local ICT infrastructure – hardware, software, networking, ICT support staff, etc – can be obtained either through national programs or through creative approaches like fee-for-use models that provide access to ICT resources to the public.

But traditional applications of policy and financing only go so far. They work well for ensuring the sustainability of the Opportunity and Capacity elements of the ICT4E system but are largely ineffective at addressing Motivation. As an example from HRH, it has been shown that giving bonuses to healthcare workers leads to short-term improvements in quality of care but ultimately the effect fades over time – it is not kept up or prolonged, it is not sustainable.

Likewise, teachers could be given bonuses, or students could be awarded prizes or provided with some other form of recognition, for their successful and effective use of ICT in learning but that would not lead to sustained behavior.

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Motivation is Key

For ICT4E initiatives to be sustainable they must meet the needs and desires – and often the latter more so than the former – of the “end users,” of the teachers and preceptors that use the technology to teach, demonstrate and facilitate as well as the students that use it to learn, connect and have fun. If the program is not aligned with these prime Motivation components then it must venture into the realm of behavior change.

And behavior change is difficult. I’ve learned this the hard way. I’ve left a small trail of failed ICT initiatives in my wake that were unsuccessful not because of the technology but rather because I didn’t have a clear understanding of the culture into which the technology was being introduced, because I didn’t consider Motivation.

And this brings me back to definitions. I began by trying to find a useful definition of sustainable. This led me to:

sustain – keep up, prolong

But I think there may be a better, more useful definition:

sustain – to supply with sustenance: nourish

We need ICT4E initiatives that promote and support teachers’ desires to teach and students’ desires to learn. We need sustaining rather than sustainable ICT4E.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

The educational system is a much simpler beast in comparison. A schematic showing the major subsystems can be drawn on a paper napkin over a cup of coffee.

Sustainability of the system itself is a matter of getting sufficient funding to keep the accounting books straight. One needs nothing fancier than that well-worn classical tool – cost-benefit analysis – to figure out whether an intended action would make the system better or make it worse.

The tool is simple enough but care has to be taken in its use. The full cost – which means the opportunity cost – has to be considered and weighed against the benefits, for an appropriately chosen period. Sustainability in the present context of the use ICT in education would mean that over some pre-defined period, the benefits at the very least justify the costs. That leaves only the problem of how to measure the relevant benefits and costs.

Also it must be acknowledged that there is no such thing as “the educational system.” There are numerous educational systems, each with its own constraints as defined by various socio-economic conditions. Whether a specific intervention is sustainable or not depends on the type of educational system. More concretely, the introduction of high technology could be sustainable in high-income countries but not in low-income countries. Or the introduction of high technology could be sustainable where human capital (teachers) is relatively more expensive than technology, not otherwise.

ICT has the advantage of scale economies, a feature that is almost entirely missing in human labor-intensive teaching methods. Scale economies means that the average cost drops as the quantities supplied increases. They arise wherever fixed costs are high but the marginal cost of supplying is very low. ICT solutions will be particularly effective – and therefore that much more sustainable – in places where the numbers are large.

Fortunately, large numbers are easily encountered in many environments. Furthermore, these large numbers need not be geographically concentrated. Advances in communications (the “C” in ICT) technologies have made it extremely cheap to record, store, transmit, and remotely retrieve information over long distances. Moreover, content is a non-rival good. It means that one person’s use of the good does not diminish the quantity available for others. Together, those two facts imply that educational content once created can be used by many who are geographically dispersed. This argues for the use of widespread use of ICT and points to its sustainability.

Costs and Benefits are Relative

Another point worth keeping in mind is that there are various levels of education, from primary education to extremely highly specialized education at the tertiary level. While in most cases, education at the higher end of the spectrum must involve ICT, whether ICT can be sustainably used at the lower end of the spectrum is a matter that is context sensitive.

For example, in Berkeley, California, technology is cheap relative to labor. There it makes sense to use computers to address adult illiteracy (to the extent that there is adult illiteracy.) In the numerous public libraries in Berkeley, computers are available by the scores and anyone who wishes can use them for free. The wages of a tutor, however, are very high.

Compare the Berkeley situation with say a small town, Akola, in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Akola does not have freely available computers in public libraries. Actually, there are no public libraries in Akola. The cost of deploying, maintaining and using one computer – which could be used by at most a hand-full of people – would be comparable to the annual per capita income of India. Instead, employing a person to teach adult literacy using the same money would benefit dozens of learners.

I argue that one has to be careful about figuring in the full cost of an intervention. This becomes especially important when subsidies are introduced which distort the true costs. Subsidies for computers may make it appear as if the cost-benefit calculus is working out but in truth it could be that a more comprehensive calculation would reveal that the costs exceed the benefits. Resources of all kinds have alternative uses and what is spent on subsidies in one area is not available for spending on other areas.

This topic of what sustainability means in the context of the use of ICT in education is fascinating and important. It’s rich with possibilities and focusing attention on it can have definite policy implications. The welfare impacts of a good ICT use policy are far from trivial and therefore the topic deserves our serious attention.

Sustainability is the ability of an educational ecosystem to maintain scholastic processes, functions, diversity and productivity into the future.

Yet that’s a pretty broad and vague statement. Bringing it down to a practical level, how might we introduce information and communication technologies into existing educational ecosystems where they can absorb it and own the change?

Starting with cost, where most do, is “sustainability” covering local costs through local fees or taxes? Should national governments be the funder? Or is sustainability actually greater than merely its monetary price, but actually creating community ownership to the point of local customization in implementation, and self-propagating growth and expansion?

Regardless of how we define it, how can schools or Ministries of Education achieve this “sustainability”? What resources do they need or need to re-purpose to achieve it?

For October, the Educational Technology Debate will have two distinguished discussants who will take a holistic approach, considering the many stakeholders in education, and hopefully go well beyond funding, without loosing sight of this always-rare resource:

• James BonTempo
  James BonTempo is the Learning Technology Advisor for Jhpiego, an international non-profit health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. He is responsible for strategic planning for the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into pre-service education and in-service training programs. He also leads efforts to design, develop, implement and evaluate ICT initiatives in both arenas.
• Atanu Dey
  Atanu Dey works as the chief economist at NetCore, a technology firm in Mumbai. His area of interest are the use of technology in education, economic growth of India, and the development of rural populations. He worked in product marketing for several years at Hewlett Packard in California, before receiving his PhD in economics from UC Berkeley. He developed a model called “RISC — Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons” while a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford.

Please join us for what we all expect to be a lively and informative conversation exploring “sustainability” for ICT projects in education. Your input can start right now in the comments below, and James and Atanu will post their opening remarks beginning Monday, October 5.

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