Over five weeks UNESCO, in partnership with Nokia, is launching its Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning with the release of a set of twelve papers reviewing mobile learning initiatives, implications for ICT in education policies and how mobile technologies support teacher development. The papers will be released according to regions of the world.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to achieving the pillars of Education for All (EFA), which are universal access to education, equity in education and the delivery of quality education. Given the unprecedented uptake of mobile devices in the world – there are now almost 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions – these ICT present a new and exciting possibility for supporting EFA.

UNESCO is committed to fully exploring how mobile learning, using mobile devices alone or in combination with other ICT, can improve education. While mobile learning is certainly not new, only in very recent years is it receiving widespread attention and building serious momentum. The evidence base for how mobiles can improve grades, increase learner motivation, deliver content to hard-to-reach communities, support district and school administration, and enable adult education in areas such as literacy, is mounting.

However, many challenges still abound, including the lack of an enabling policy environment, inequity of access, negative social attitudes towards mobile devices as learning tools, lack of awareness of mobile learning, high cost of usage and concerns around online safety. It is essential that the ICT in education community engages with these issues in open dialogue with policy makers, principals, teachers and parents so that the potential benefits of mobile learning are realised, and the challenges are addressed. Two areas of particular interest to UNESCO are policies related to mobile learning, and how mobiles can be used to support teachers and their professional development.

Mobile learning initiatives and related policies

Many governments have adopted some form of national ICT in education policy. However, many of these policies were developed in the ‘pre-mobile’ era. The few policies that do refer to mobile devices either reference them obliquely or, in some cases, ban them. Overall, there is a dearth of considered and thorough mobile learning policies. To address this vacuum UNESCO will develop a set of guidelines for mobile learning policies to help national governments and educators create environments in which mobile learning can flourish. The papers released over the coming weeks are the initial research to inform the guidelines, which will be published in late 2012.

Mobile technologies for teacher support and professional development

There is a global shortage of trained and motivated teachers. In order to meet the EFA goal of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2015, 5.4 million primary teachers are needed. How can mobile technologies play a role in meeting this need, in supporting teachers and their professional development, and in retaining existing teachers? Initial research has shown that this is a relatively unexplored area of mobile learning and that there is much more that can be done with mobile technologies. UNESCO’s forthcoming papers identify some of the existing mobile-based teacher development projects, and how this area can be further developed. The papers inform four projects that UNESCO will implement with teacher training organisations in Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan and Mexico in 2012 to further explore and understand this area.

Release schedule

For each region there is one paper on mobile learning initiatives and related policies, as well as one on mobile technologies for teacher support and professional development. The papers will be released as follows:

• 26 April: Latin America and North America papers
• 3 May: Europe papers
• 10 May: Asia papers
• 17 May: Africa and Middle East papers
• 22 May: Two global findings papers that synthesise information across the five regional papers in each series

Please note that the papers are not a comprehensive regional review, but a regional scan to identify and review illustrative cases of mobile learning initiatives, related policies and examples of teacher support and professional development projects via mobile technologies. UNESCO embraces a purposefully broad definition of mobile devices – including mobile phones, e-readers, tablet computers, MP3 players and handheld gaming consoles – in recognition that the list is dynamic. Of importance is not the exact definition of mobile devices but rather how they can be used to support education. However, while UNESCO supports a flexible definition, its current work in mobile learning will focus predominately on mobile phones because of their widespread pervasiveness. The papers thus look at mobile phones in particular when discussing mobile learning.

As a whole, the UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning provides a valuable snapshot of what mobile learning looks like around the world.  Collectively and individually, the papers consolidate lessons learned in different regions to provide policy makers, educators, and other stakeholders a tool to help them now and in the future better leverage mobile technology for learning.

Please provide feedback on the papers. The input of the widest possible range of stakeholders, from national policy makers to rural teachers, is critical for helping develop and improve the field of mobile learning. Comments from practitioners in particular regions are especially valuable as the mobile learning landscape is highly uneven and nuanced. It will take a global view, but local conversations, to understand how mobile learning is best applied in particular contexts.

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There are many organizations, corporations, and institutions conduct open and distance education in China, among which two strands represent the mainstream of open and distance education development.

The Open University of China (Hereafter the OUC), based on the original China Radio & TV Universities system (the CRTVUs’ system) is now under construction, which symbolizes that the strategic transformation process has been started from the CRTVUs into open universities. The Outline of National Medium and Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) has clarified further objective and mission of our national education system reform and China Central Radio & TV University has been listed as one of the pilot units to explore the mode for building open universities.

Also there are 68 e-colleges in conventional universities utilizing information technology for open and distance education delivery. With a view of implementing the strategic objective laid out by the government, open and distance education institutions have defined their further measures to facilitate continuing education and life long learning.

First of all, both the open universities and e-colleges in China are trying to focus on quality education for their degree and non-degree programs. Quality issue has been on the agenda of different universities for daily operation of open and distance education. The practitioners in the field of open and distance education are now trying to explore the balance among scale, quality and cost. The philosophy of students-centered ideas has been taken as guidelines for China’s ODL practice in meeting diversified learning groups who expect more quality learning resources, relevant learning platform and effective public service systems, which entrusts the OUC with many new tasks and challenges ahead.

Secondly, while enhancing and upgrading degree education programs, multiple training programs have been developed for the objective of lifelong learning by using information technology to increase the overall educational standards, and facilitate teaching and learning reform and innovation.

Thirdly, a good mechanism for sharing quality resources is being constructed. The learning resources will be planned totally open to the whole society to allow the general public to acquire what they really want. The initial step is to pool resources available and then to solve the problem of accreditation, accumulation and transformation of learning achievements.

Fourthly, public service systems in accordance with the profession and regions are being built in order to offer necessary support to the varieties. The healthy competition and complement advantages from each other are encouraged so that people can obtain best services.

In all, the trend for open and distance education in China is towards offering high quality programs, creating technology-enhanced teaching and learning environment, making quality resources available and open to the public, meeting diversified requirements, clearing obstacles, connecting variety education programs and building the overpass of life-long learning.

By producing quality resources, by increasing capacity for running schools and services, by utilizing satellite, TV, internet, mobile terminal to offer affluent degree and non-degree education programs to enable learning to take place anywhere, for anybody, at anytime. China is intending to offer quality educational resources to every household, whether people in remote area or inhabited in the vast rural territory or minority group region.

The key issue is to meet the demands of all the social members for acquiring high quality educational resources and services so that we can ensure education opportunities offered evenly throughout the whole country and realize education equity and social justice in a real sense.

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In April of this year, I wrote the following in the Educational technology Debate post eReaders will transform the developing world – in and outside the classroom:

“If Worldreader’s experience so far is any guide, e-readers are set to transform the developing world, both in – and outside the classroom. But this change won’t be driven by e-readers by themselves – it will be driven by human curiosity, ever-increasing connectivity, enlightened self-interest, and a gentle push from organizations like ours.”

Having just returned from visiting Worldreader’s program in Ghana, as well as looking at the recent trends in e-reader pricing, I believe this more strongly than I did six months ago. The planets are coming into alignment for a true revolution in the way the developing world reads, and consequently for the way students learn.

Worldreader’s impact

First, a bit of background. Worldreader is working to put books into the hands of one million children in the developing world by 2015. Working with USAID and a private aid agency in Ghana, we’ve put e-readers into the hands of hundreds of children, and then loaded them with local text- and story-books, as well as international fiction.

In total, we have distributed over 80,000 e-books in the past nine months. It’s worth thinking about that number for a second, because it’s staggering: it’s the equivalent of two-and-a-half shipping containers. In our case, they were all delivered wirelessly, using the same cell-phone infrastructure that is becoming more ubiquitous every day. (Ghana’s Daily Graphic reports that mobile phone penetration stands at 81%.)

What’s even more interesting is that number doesn’t count the thousands of books that the children and teachers have downloaded themselves over the same period. Just looking at the four-month period from May-August (much of which was over vacation), we logged downloads of 1,301 free book downloads and samples (one popular book: No Good Deed), 1,036 educational game downloads (including Thread Words— I played it with a few students while I was there), and 92 subscription downloads for free trials of newspapers and magazines.

Remember that all of this is against a context of a severe lack of books. According to SACMEQ, half of the classrooms across six countries studied in Sub-Saharan African have no textbooks at all, because of cost and logistical issues. And as Michael Trucano notes in his World Bank blog, ”Only 1 out of 19 countries studied (Botswana) ha[s] adequate textbook provision at close to a 1:1 ratio for all subjects and all grades.” Books just aren’t getting to Sub Saharan Africa.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that when we put books into students’ and teachers’ hands, they read them. Two weeks ago I met a girl named Patience who had read 90 books in the past six months, and she wasn’t alone: children across the classroom had devoured 50, 60, or 70 books. In fact, on average children are now spending 50% more time reading than those in control schools, and primary students’ test scores have increased some eight points more than those of students in comparable schools.

While everyone knows that test scores fluctuate wildly over the short-run, it’s clear that these children are reading more than ever before, and the effect is almost palpable. (The USAID observer who dropped in on our program admitted he’d never seen young children so engaged in reading… and he’d been a teacher for 10 years before joining USAID.)

Interestingly, the “reading effect” wasn’t limited to students. The English teacher at Adeiso Presbyterian Junior High School teaches one class with e-readers and one without. He admitted to me that he felt a bit lazy (his words) in the e-reader class, because the students had already competed all the reading. Cynthia, a primary-school teacher, proudly showed her collection of religious and inspirational book samples that she had collected. And parents we surveyed reported that their children were reading to their siblings after school.

Local publishers embrace e-readers

Equally interesting is how publishers are responding. Local publishes see this as an opportunity to expand their market dramatically, both within the developing world and outside. As Elliot Agyare of Ghana’s SMartlin Publishing has said, “I’d be more than happy to drop my prices to [50 cents] if I could sell on hundreds of thousands of e-readers.”

Meanwhile, international publishers have taken note: Worldreader has obtained the rights to use books from Random House (including the Magic Tree House series), Penguin (including four of Roald Dahl’s books), and more in our program for free. For international publishers, it’s an inexpensive way to help the developing world become active readers.

A selection of the 230 books in Worldreader’s program.

Overcoming issues – real and perceived

The other interesting news is what’s not happening: theft hasn’t been a problem. Of the 500+ e-readers in circulation in Ghana, we’ve lost a grand total of three over the past six months. And a boy came up to me while I was there and reported he thought he’d seen one of the missing units in town— we’re tracking it down. The communities have been magnificently unified in working with us to see our work together succeed.

Of course, there’s less-good news too: e-readers still break too often (though Amazon has done good analysis on why, and is helping with solutions, plus we’re now using different cases and rolling out an incentive program to keep the Kindles unbroken). It’s not always easy to keep up with the kids’ appetite for new local books: it takes a fair amount of effort to maintain momentum with local publishers who have lots of issues to juggle. But these issues get easier with scale, as we build demand for more hardware and books.

At this point, most observers will be thinking two things: the program, though early, seems to have some traction, but the cost must be high. And there’s no doubt that e-readers are still too expensive to catch on widely in the developing world. But recent evidence suggests convincingly that prices are coming down fast: Amazon’s least-expensive Kindle is now $79, as compared to $399 three years ago. Of course, that’s for an advertising-supported, WiFi only model.

Still, if you assume the existence of a $50 e-reader, and spread that cost over 5 years, you’re approaching costs that many parents and governments can bear. In fact, the enclosed picture of a receipt is for the purchase of a single math textbook that a headmaster purchased on behalf of one of his teachers. The cost of the book is 12 Ghanaian Cedis (about $8.00) for only one of about eight required textbooks across the curriculum.

Expanding past Ghana

But perhaps the success we have seen so far is specific to conditions in Ghana, or to the people involved in this pilot. Well, early indications from our work in East Africa suggest otherwise. This past weekend, Al Jazeera aired a piece on our work in Kenya’s Rift Valley, and the results are largely consistent with what we’ve seen in Ghana.

What’s remarkable is that after the initial set-up, content load, and training, much of the on-going work has been in the hands of local teachers. We believe this is a fundamental ingredient to the success of any ICT program: teachers have to embrace the program, and for that to happen, implementation needs to be easy. In the case of e-readers, this is the case: the technology is simple to use, and in the end, incorporating it into the classroom feels familiar. After all, they’re really just books.

Worldreader is just getting started. The technology we’re using is still early in its development, and prices are still high. But the trends are all headed in the right direction to allow us to achieve something unimaginable before, potentiall allowing entire countries to skip the paper stage of books in favor of e-books. If that happens, we’ll unleash a wave of creativity that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

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EGRA testing in Ethiopia

Experts agree that measuring reading progress early offers the benefits of informing remediation, taking a snapshot in time or showing progress over time of children’s reading abilities and informing stakeholders and policy makers about what programs or methods work.

Frequent diagnostic testing at national or classroom levels can serve to establish benchmarks; and monitoring progress against these benchmarks can be a key factor in motivating schools, teachers, students, and families (Davidson, Korda, & Collins, 2011).

The Education for All Fast Track Initiative recently set two indicators related to reading skills:

1. Proportion of students who, after two years of schooling, demonstrate sufficient reading fluency and comprehension to “read to learn”
2. Proportion of students who are able to read with comprehension, according to their countries’ curricular goals, by the end of primary school

These indicators are considered an effective measure of a school system’s overall health as well as a specific diagnosis of reading performance that can inform policy and implementation of curriculum and teacher training, among other things. According to Gove and Wetterberg (2011),

“The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) is one tool used to measure students’ progress toward learning to read. It is a test that is administered orally, one student at a time. In about 15 minutes, it examines a student’s ability to perform fundamental prereading and reading skills” (p. 2).

Over the past five years, we at RTI International, various donors, and experts in the field of early reading have worked to “develop, pilot, and implement EGRA in more than 50 countries and 70 languages” (p. 2). Assessments like EGRA help teachers focus on results, by describing what children know or do not know, and where instruction must focus in order to change that. For example, in Egypt, the first Arabic EGRA survey showed very clearly that children who knew letter sounds performed better on reading a short passage than children who only knew letter names; yet 50% of children tested could not identify a single letter sound. These findings signaled that a fundamental shift in instructional methods was required, and after schools adopted a phonics-based approach using letter sounds, performance increased nearly 200% over baseline one year later (Cvelich, 2011).

That said, to measure for results, teachers and their supervisors must find the tools accessible and easy to use to inform their own instruction. It also helps if the results underpin communication with parents and communities, as well as national politicians. (Crouch, 2011). Too often, results from national standardized tests remain at the national level, with teachers rarely getting feedback on performance, much less feedback that is more specific than classroom averages. Furthermore, it can sometimes be months, if not years, before the results of large national assessments are made available, at which time it is too late to change instructional practices – at least for that set of children.

How can ICT play a role?

Systematic use of mobile devices to assess early literacy and numeracy, especially in developing countries, remains limited to date. Reasons include:

• Initial procurement cost of the devices and the necessity for specific training in their use;
• Lack of robust cost-benefit analyses to inform sustainability of this type of approach; and
• Limitations in local capacity to develop or manipulate the necessary data collection software.

As we state elsewhere (Pouezevara & Strigel, 2011), there are several ways in which information and communication technologies (ICT) may be applied to the assessment process to make implementation and use of the results more accessible:

• Creating or tailoring tests
• Training data collectors
• Collecting actual field data
• Manipulating and managing the data to extract and present the most significant findings.

Among these, the greatest added value is in using electronic devices for data collection and rapid analysis in place of paper-based assessments.

• Electronic devices can reduce the amount of paper needed, as well as the associated costs. Expenses dispensed with include the actual purchase of paper, clipboards, pencils, timers and so on, as well as the labor involved in the lengthy processes of checking student sheets for copy quality, stapling individual packets, counting instruments out by team and school in advance of data collection in the field, and distributing the packets. Paper-related costs such as printing, supplies, data entry, and data cleaning can make up 5%–15% of the entire budget of an EGRA implementation, according to an RTI internal review.
• Collecting data digitally means that it can move directly from a device into a database for analysis. This has several benefits in terms of efficiency: less time for data entry, lower data-entry costs, and less time to report out results. Quicker access can encourage stakeholders to do such assessments even when they need data rapidly to make important decisions based on results.
• Electronic means have the potential to reduce the number of points for human error in moving from paper to database to analysis software. As with most sophisticated survey software, programmers can build in checks or stops to help assessors recognize data-entry errors immediately, at the time of administration.
• Electronic media can be less physically challenging than dealing with paper-related administration: “An electronic solution may also reduce measurement errors arising from problems in handling the timers and other testing materials. Difficulties include forgetting to start the timer, setting the wrong amount of time on the timer, or leaving student prompt sheets with the student when they should have been taken away” (Pouezevara & Strigel, 2011, p. 188).

What solutions are available?

In theory, there are many potential ways to transform paper assessments into an electronic equivalent, but a custom solution is required because of differences between oral reading assessments like EGRA and other standard surveys. For example, data have to be entered at the child’s pace on the subtasks, not that of the assessor. Therefore, survey data collection applications on the market for phones, PDAs, or portable computers typically are not appropriate.

After investigating a wide range of potential hardware and software platforms, we developed Tangerine™, a digital assessment interface for touch-screen tablet computers running the Android operating system (see photographs). It can be used for the standard EGRA approach, or customized for other types of surveys such as early math diagnostics or school information surveys.

Other organizations are also exploring a variety of solutions. Prodigy Systems, an organization that has partnered with RTI in Yemen, successfully developed iProSurveyor for use with Arabic assessments on the iPad. Its first large-scale implementation in Yemen in early 2011 confirmed many of the benefits of the digital approach.

• The database output was easily readable by any data analysis program, avoiding time-consuming manual data transcription and recoding before statistical analysis.
• Administration errors, such as forgetting to start the timer or enter a response, were minimized through built-in error control.
• Significantly fewer materials had to be transported in challenging terrain and an environment unfavorable to printed materials.
• No issues arose linked to poor printing quality or stapling.
• Total administration time was quicker relative to paper assessment (comparison conducted over one assessment administrator).

Cost-Benefit Analysis

At RTI we recently conducted a preliminary cost-benefit analysis using approximate costs from recent EGRA implementations in four different African countries. The analysis aimed to identify the point of cost recovery at which the digital approach would actually yield cost savings. We modeled not one, but three data collection rounds for each country, because it is common to repeat assessments  - e.g., for program baseline, midterm, and post-intervention evaluation, or annual monitoring of student outcomes.

In our cost calculation for the digital approach, we assumed hardware costs of USD300/enumerator plus a 10% contingency for spares and accessories, such as a wireless access point for field-based data back-up for the first data collection (e.g., baseline). For the cost of a second digital data collection, we assumed re-use of the tablets from the first data collection, but factored in a 15% contingency just in case replacements are needed.

To calculate the cost of a second paper-based data collection we multiplied the paper-related costs by two, as the same costs for printing, data entry, and data cleaning would incur again. We followed the same process for adding a third data collection to the calculation (assuming baseline, mid-term, and post-intervention assessments).

As shown in Exhibit 1, for most small-sample data collections or one-time assessments, the cost of the hardware may not be offset by the eliminated paper-related costs. The return on investment in repeated implementations, however, is clear in terms of cumulative costs.

Exhibit 1: Cost of EGRA implementation, paper vs. electronic, for three administrations

In addition to making large national assessments more efficient, the same devices can be adapted for use as classroom-based continuous assessment tools, or as data entry interfaces for situations that still require paper-based tests. With such devices in their hands, teachers or school supervisors can do regular mastery checks more frequently, and capture the results at student and classroom levels.

The resulting data set is a rich one, and if it is supported by built-in computer-based analytics, it can be analyzed in multiple ways to indicate not only whether the methods in place are improving reading ability, but also what areas of the curriculum need more attention, and which children or groups of children are falling behind. For example, detailed item analysis at the classroom or individual level might show a recurring problem with vowel sounds, or decoding. This subsequently provides clear instructional recommendations to focus on.

Limitations and pitfalls

However, electronic administration is not necessarily a cure-all:

Obviously, using electronic data collection at either national or classroom levels does not solve all the limitations of print-based testing; indeed, doing so might introduce new challenges. For example, although a digital solution would eliminate the risk of environmental damage to paper forms during difficult transport situations, it might pose a great risk that all assessment data could be lost at once through loss, damage, or theft of a single device, if proper backup procedures were not in place. Likewise, handling of the new device might prove to be more challenging than handling the timer and all associated materials. […] Thus, strong electronic quality control and supportive supervision during data collection would be crucial. (Pouezevara & Strigel, 2011, p. 188)

Furthermore, the EGRA approach is intended to be a simple solution that can be adopted by countries with minimum technical assistance. An electronic solution should be flexible enough that it does not create dependency of users on software programmers or hardware technicians to change test items and configuration as needed.

In terms of costs, clearly, initial investment costs for specialized hardware may be prohibitive in some situations, but our preliminary cost-benefit analysis indicated that over time the investment will pay off if used for multiple large-scale implementations. Additionally, implementers can leverage the initial investment by choosing tools that can be used for other purposes when not in use for assessment—for example, by loading tablet computers with other instructional materials, training resources, or literacy materials.

We can also foresee assessment software being linked not only to automatically generated analysis of results, but also to suggested instructional resources tailored to those results and a record of day-to-day time on task. It is also possible, using the same technologies that power Tangerine™, to adapt the assessment methodology to more common and less expensive handheld devices, such as mobile phones. These smaller devices might be particularly useful for the most rapid types of literacy assessments, such as Pratham’s yearly literacy and numeracy surveys, which involve fewer subtasks than EGRA and fewer items per test.

Another potential pitfall related to making national or continuous assessments more readily accessible is that they could be used for excessive assessment, and focus on “teaching to the test” at the expense of other higher order or student-centered activities. Too much focus on averages or aggregated results can draw attention away from the achievement of specific subgroups. Additionally, care must be taken that classroom-level results are not misused by aggregating small samples and reporting them up to the national level or attempting to generalize them.

This is a rapidly evolving field, with new technologies arriving on the market almost daily, and prices falling significantly, so it is expected that it will become increasingly feasible to implement electronic methods for literacy assessments in developing countries. Meanwhile, we are piloting various solutions and collaborating with other institutions that have similar goals. Further interest and ideas from the international development community are welcome.

References

Crouch, L. (2011). Motivating early grade instruction and learning: Institutional issues. Ch. 7 in A. Gove & A. Wetterberg, The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Applications and interventions to improve basic literacy (pp. 227–250). Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI Press. Available from http://www.rti.org/pubs/bk-0007-1109-wetterberg.pdf

Cvelich, P. (2011, September/October). Egypt shakes up the classroom. Frontlines. Washington, DC: United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Available from http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_sep11/FL_sep11_EDU_EGYPT.html

Davidson, M., Korda, M., & White Collins, O. (2011). Teachers’ use of EGRA for continuous assessment: The case of EGRA Plus: Liberia. Ch. 4 in A. Gove & A. Wetterberg, The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Applications and interventions to improve basic literacy (pp. 113–138). Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI Press. Available from http://www.rti.org/pubs/bk-0007-1109-wetterberg.pdf

Gove, A., & Wetterberg, A. (2011). The Early Grade Reading Assessment: An introduction. Ch. 1 in A. Gove & A. Wetterberg, The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Applications and interventions to improve basic literacy (pp. 1–38). Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI Press. Available from http://www.rti.org/pubs/bk-0007-1109-wetterberg.pdf

Pouezevara, S., & Strigel, C. (2011). Using information and communication technologies to support EGRA. Ch. 6 in A. Gove & A. Wetterberg, The Early Grade Reading Assessment: Applications and interventions to improve basic literacy (pp. 183–226). Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI Press. Available from http://www.rti.org/pubs/bk-0007-1109-wetterberg.pdf

Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) isn’t sexy per se. It doesn’t employ cutting edge networking and caching technologies. It isn’t an Android application. It doesn’t even do social media. IRI may not have the whistles and bells that often support (and sometimes distract) in ICT for Development, but what it lacks in bling, it makes up for in effectiveness.

1. It scales – one tape player, one moderator, many students.
2. It engages – students’ attention spans are courted and kept.
3. It reaches – thousands learn, in places where cellular coverage providers, electricity utilities, and governments have little incentive to provide service.

However, IRI lacks the “R” – the radio in Interactive Radio Instruction refers to the content, not the mechanism. Students listen to voices coming out of a rectangular device, much like a radio. Where does “real” radio come into IRI?

I have been self-taught with IRI, reading what I could on the subject by experts like Mary Myers and following EDC efforts – probably the most comprehensive programs to date. However, as many community-based organizations know, having the experts create an IRI initiative for a community is expensive (and likely worth the expense, unless the expense is simply out of range). Custom hardware initiatives, such as the Talking Book by Literacy Bridge, offer alternative ways to conduct IRI-based education.

Through my own work in trying to add interactivity to community radio, I’ve gotten good exposure to educational programming and have come up with some permutations of IRI that seem appropriate for communities and less expensive than “expert” IRI providers, even if the processes are not as clean. The traditional model of tape recorder, tape, and teacher starting and stopping the tapes is always fine and good, but limited in terms of extensibility, and collaboration with other schools and organizations that can be helpful in curriculum development and subject matter expertise.

Tapes and their players break. The interactivity is based on information dissemination, not information exchange, remaining a one-way communication system. While real-time two-way communication is a luxury in many communities, there are ways to truly make IRI interactive and to engage radio. It’s time to upgrade the I and R in IRI.

Using Community Radio

I’ve worked with elementary schools where teachers outsource teaching to CDs and IRI programs, even though IRI requires in-class moderation of learning modules. Lessons were often repeated, and learning became rote. As part of an unrelated project to build a closed WiFi network that connected wifi-enabled phones to the community radio station in town, the radio station saw the opportunity to offer interactive teaching, inviting subject experts and teachers come to the station to deliver lessons. Radio receivers are more common than tape players, and having educational content on the air gave the content cachet and visibility that won students and non-students alike to listen.

In addition to delivering lectures and lessons, the radio gave the WiFi phones to the students so that they could answer questions and take quizzes on air. Kids wanted to have their say on the radio, and parents wanted their kids to do better in school as it reflected well in the radio program. Classroom attendance grew, as did program complexity, using SMS and interactive voice recording systems as the community radio producers and teachers became more creative. This may not be a case that can be replicated in every community, but leveraging community radio stations is a great way to add a “real” R to IRI.

Using Mobile Phones

Similar to this, on another closed network in an Amazon educational scenario, teachers from the only high school in 400km used the mobile handsets to call other river communities on speakerphone. There was no community radio in this community, and some of the towns were a three day boat ride away. It used to be that the high school would send books and academic materials on these dugout canoes for educational use, but the river and rain more often than not ruined the texts.

Here, the original IRI model provided an effective blueprint from which to modify for geography and need. Students in other towns, facilitated by the primary school teacher or elder in the community, listened along with the lesson and were prompted to respond to the academic conversation a la conference call.

No Standard Solution, Many Options

There are natural and immediate critiques to both of these scenarios. In the first case, public praise may not be a great pedagogical model. In the second, the often-terrible connections between communities required the use of Citizen’s Band radio – one of the original ICTs! Certainly the content creation is the hardest part – this is a bit easier where English is a national language, but the judgment call needs to be made by someone much more knowledgeable about education that some of us general ICT folks are.

• Is there a national curriculum standard to follow?
• Does that standard have relevance to the students in this community?
• If not, what supplemental information is necessary for community-specific education?
• Does this content reach into vocational/health/development content?

I’ve found no dearth of content in education departments at colleges, where masters of education students are mostly willing to help for a lot less money than content experts demand – and they are also well-versed in curriculum standards and national tests, if that is an aim of the school using IRI for preparation.

Let’s also not forget richer media in the search to integrate community radio and interactivity into IRI. CD and DVD players are common in several communities, primarily in South Asia. Visual cultures seem like a natural fit for such projects as Digital Study Hall. The cost is relatively low, the scale potential is high, and the ability to show – rather than just tell – can’t be replicated by IRI or community radio. It follows one of the most effective models I know, the “see one, do one, teach one” model.

So let’s start leveraging all the ways to hear one, teach one, do more.

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Mobile devices are at the centre of a revolution delivering platforms to achieve knowledge transfer and behaviour change in Africa. With the accelerating growth of mobile devices in Africa the past few years, unique solutions have been developed to address barriers to large-scale adoption of learning platforms. In particular, the specific challenges and unique problems faced in Africa have had a marked impact on the innovation in developing novel channels for providing information in a cost-effective manner.

A key barrier to successful adoption of learning platforms is mobile penetration. It is necessary to achieve at least a minimum percentage penetration amongst a community of users to exploit network effects and viral strategies which facilitate the building of vibrant communities. Africa’s recent rapid rise of mobile phones has seen mobile penetration grow in some markets to over 100% (South Africa) and to close to 500 million connections for the continent as a whole.

When evaluating markets for feasibility the following key measures of the penetration should be considered: absolute mobile phone penetration, mobile internet penetration, desktop internet penetration and Social Networking penetration.

Absolute phone penetration provides us with with a baseline measure of the lowest common denominator technologies that can be used to deliver basic information, such as Voice, SMS, USSD and Please Call MEs. Each of these channels has characteristics that make them usable for very large scale information delivery platforms, particularly the cost of usage. As is to be expected, mobile internet penetration far outstrips desktop internet penetration in African markets and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Social network penetration on mobile and desktop can be a particularly good proxy for pinpointing markets that have vibrant communities with high levels of interconnectedness. Facebook and MXit are currently the largest social networks in Africa, both of which are showing explosive growth on the continent. The launch of Facebook zero, Facebook has developed a particularly compelling offering that allows users to access a low-bandwidth version of the social network at no cost from their mobile phone. The rapid growth of Facebook in markets where it was able to negotiate a zero cost deal with network operators, proves how important cost of access is in developing markets.

Developing effective mobile learning platforms requires a deep understanding of the multiple modalities of interaction presented by mobile phones. Novel channels are viable alternatives to voice for delivering information, building communities and driving behaviour change. As part of our work in the Praekelt Foundation we explore the channels that can lower the cost of access whilst still providing enough information to enable learning experiences.

On of the least expensive, yet effective, means of large scale messaging for the base of the pyramid is Please Call Me Messages – an approach to free messaging developed in South Africa and utilised in Project Masiluleke. Most mobile users in developing countries are on pre-paid mobile packages. Pre-paid users often ran out of airtime, which can prevent them from making a call. Please Call MEs allow them to send a free message requesting a call back. Currently over 40million Please Call MEs are sent per day in South Africa alone. In Project Masiluleke, we have tagged critical information about health services and HIV/AIDS to over 1 billion messages over the last 2 years.

USSD – or unstructured supplementary data – provides a more interactive means to deliver information and learning services to low-end text-only phones. USSD was originally developed for use by mobile operators to communicate directly with subcribers and provide access to operator functionality, such as airtime updates, service status and requests. Most pre-paid subscribers access on USSD multiple times a day to obtain their account balances and to top-up airtime. USSD allows for the creation of decision trees which a user traverses to find relevant information. Typically, interaction over USSD is either free or extremely low in cost, making it possible for 3rd party developers to build rich applications that are highly interactive, yet can function on the most basic of phone. A further benefit is that the most of the interface is already well known to the many mobile network subscribers across developing markets.

Group messaging platforms like MXit and Blackberry Messenger, allow users to chat via text for very low cost or a flat rate per month (in the case of Blackberry messenger). It has enabled the development of number of mLearning innovations like Yoza, developed by Steve Vosloo with the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation in 2010. The project was launched for “book-poor, mobile phone-rich” teenagers in South Africa to see if they would read stories on their cell phones. Says Steve Vosloo of the project:

“Yoza stories aim to captivate teens and inspire them to enjoy well-written stories by good authors. The m-novels are written in conventional language, with txtspeak only used when a character is writing or reading SMSes or instant message chats. Also included is prescribed school reading that is in the public domain, for example, Macbeth. There is no charge for the actual stories, but users do pay their mobile network operator for mobile data traffic. Images have been kept to a minimum to keep the mobile data charges low.”

One of the benefits is promoting behaviour change through social networks is the power of having members of a peer group providing help and advice on important topics, such as health or education. Recognising this opportunity, the Praekelt Foundation launched YoungAfricaLive, a groundbreaking mobile platform where young people learn and talk about life issues, including love, sex, relationships and HIV/AIDS.

The portal features daily blogs by young South Africans sharing their journeys through the difficult terrain of love, sex and relationships in the time of HIV. Along with relationship advice, facts on HIV, STDs, Safe Sex and more, these stories have created a safe sex-savvy community that logs on daily to give and receive support and advice. Since it launch in December 2009, the network has signed up over 400,000 users. One of the reasons for its rapid growth and success has been the stickiness of the platform, over a 1,000,000 comments have been posted and an extremely lively community has spontaneously coalesced around the topics that are important to them.

Social platforms allow granular tracking of connections between users and identifying the most influential people in a network. Since all stories can be commented on, and users can “like” each others comments, it is possible to build a very detailed map of the connections between users and thereby identifying which users have the greatest impact on opinion in the network. We can then target influencers in the network with information that we wish to deliver and track the traversal of the message through the network.

Mobile penetration and cost of data and messaging remain the largest obstacles to large scale usage of mobile platforms to improve learning in Africa. Through the use of novel low-cost channels such as SMS, USSD, and Mobile Social Networks it is possible to build compelling platforms that are available to every user of a mobile phone in Africa, and that can have meaningful impact on our users lives.

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The Mobile landscape in Africa has rapidly evolved over the past decade with 380 Million mobile subscribers and 1 million added every week. This growth has been fueled in a large part by the liberalization effort resulting in the formation of independent regulatory bodies and increased competition in the market. This has enhanced numerous grassroots efforts to empower the poor and marginalized by providing access to knowledge through technology, more so a platform for communication. SMS and voice is being used in innovative ways to share knowledge and improve learning among students in Africa.

Text to Change: Best practices

Text to Change has over the years proven that SMS and Voice based applications can be used successfully in various interactive mobile health education programs reaching thousands of people across the African continent. Text to Change (TTC) uses text messaging (SMS) to encourage behavioral change and has proved that this approach is a highly effective communication channel for health education, encouraging testing and drug compliance and informing people of the choices available to them concerning their wellbeing.

For example in 2008, TTC in partnership with Zain and Aids Information Centre, Uganda, devised a six-eight week SMS behavioral change campaign which was advertised with the slogan ‘’Don’t guess, learn the truth about AIDS’’ and its aim was to encourage people to know about their HIV status and learn more about the disease. Today, TTC is active in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, the impact of these programs needs to be complimented by other media like Radio and posters to build an awareness platform.

Opportunities and challenges

60% of people in Africa are under the age of 24, a school going age, which is knowledgeable about new technologies (even the use of smart phones) and becoming very demanding. The youth are booming with lots of enthusiasm to explore and learn any technologies at their disposal in schools and communities. They learn fast and are inquisitive. Technology distracts youth- either positively or negatively. The idea is keeping it simple to encourage learning. Also, mobile is still a more affordable technology than a computer for the youth seeing that service providers always have subsidized packages that accommodate them.

Technology role out for learning is still stalled by a number of factors in Africa including:

• Poor ICT policy implementation especially in the areas of Health and Education. These two areas are complimentary – will you educate an unhealthy nation?
• Most schools in Africa still do not accept mobile phone possession in classroom or even at school. Aspects of high teacher absenteeism and quality of teachers are still apparent.
• Limited mobile coverage especially in the rural areas which has also led to poor internet connectivity. Mobile operators are always seeking a win-win market situation– how then should we package these programs to make them interesting to the operators?
• Africa is characterized by too many ICT pilots of which most have not materialized to ongoing impact generating programs.
• Technology is powered by Electricity, which is a challenge to most of rural Africa.

The bloggers reflections

The future of ICT/Mobile deployment in mLearning is encouraging, however, this cannot be substituted for a weak education system – a good quality education sector is vital. It should be understood that ICT/Mobile is just a tool or an enabler to development. Success stories and failures aside, we need to be unambiguous about the definition of M-learning which varies from country to country. I believe the biggest opportunities lie in the access to information and knowledge.

In my outlook, many of the mLearning initiatives are designed within a ‘’what if’’ scenario: “What if everyone in rural Africa has access to a smart phone and/ or has access to internet?” The fact of the matter is that, inspite the rapid growth of the mobile industry; we need to use that which is currently available and practical. In most parts of Africa, we are limited to SMS, and Voice; this is the only medium that works on most basic devices. Teaching how to read, write and to do simple arithmetic is the responsibility of the parents, teacher and the government. It is complex to replace that by applications and mobile technology. I encourage that ICT or mobile should always be used as an enabler and could never be successful if it is used in isolation.

Mobile operators could encompass the role of an incubator; where a commercially viable product is introduced that will encourage the deployment and uptake of the other operators. Competition drives innovation. It is undeniable that operators are an enabler of technology with good network coverage and infrastructure their primary role. Text to change has partnerships with most major mobile operators in East Africa from which we get subsidized tariffs. Our short codes run on all networks in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

For example, Orange is providing us with technical support in countries where they have operations; however, the partnership does not demand exclusivity- we are open to work with other existing operators within the region. I then must argue that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is always a short term association. To have a sustainable working relationship with the mobile operators we must ensure a win- win situation since the primary goal / core business of the operator is to provide network services and make profits. This is how it should be. I rather have premium services and pay for it than a CSR project that doesn’t have priority for the service provider because it is not profitable.

Very many pilots in developing countries are currently donor funded and have created vast impact. The question is if they are successful, why then doesn’t the government take them on and scale them up nationwide? It is a pity to say that if the government does not scale them up then we remain in a pilot cycle.

The role of government (education ministries) can never be over emphasized. Development of a strong regulatory framework involving a range of stakeholders with accent on end user involvement will bring us far. For example, in Uganda a technical e-readiness working group is in place with the aim to bring different stakeholders together to accelerate ICT implementations in Uganda. A national ICT policy is in place and an education sector ICT policy is before Cabinet. The Ministry of Education and Sports is taking steps to co-ordinate ICT development and has allocated resources to support implementation of its ICT strategy.

Nationwide deployment of a mLearning application programme could only be successful with the inclusion of government having a dedicated budget. That said, mLearning applications have the potential to improve and strengthen the current Education system if integrated into an existing ‘well functioning’ Education system. It is interesting to ask ‘’If the paper based system works; why replace it by mobile phones? ‘’

The fact that Mobile is the most widely used technology in Africa and more people have access to a phone than a computer or even to good quality educational material offers vast opportunities for mLearning.

Recommendations to policy makers, regulators and other stakeholders

My 2 cents lie in the need to develop a legal regulatory framework, mobilize resources to support development of programmes and applications for mLearning. The Ministry should also directly support the development of mLearning applications and or innovations. In addition, the use and deployment of proved programmes and applications in the Education sector.

Before supporting more pilots, donors should research on what already exists; what has worked and what hasn’t. This will help cub duplication. Since most pilots are funded externally, therefore, we need to be creative in sourcing funds and build new business models to ensure continuity. The role of government and other private sector parties cannot be undermined to ensure continuity or sustainability of the pilot projects after the donor has exited. However, we need to be mindful that the MLearning project objectives should therefore be able to meet the countries’ development goals to attract continual implementation by government.

Public private partnerships in the mobile industry need to be encouraged. Tax on Mobile technology, especially on mobile devices is very high in East Africa. In Uganda the VAT on Mobile products is high at 30%. A recent report on the GSMA shows that mobile subscribers across East Africa are highly taxed the world over. This has to be lowered to encourage mobile deployment in Africa. In order to encourage mLearning, the government needs to be creative with tax incentives that will encourage service providers to engage without incurring losses.

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Calls are frequently heard for improving schooling by closing the gap between children’s life out-of-school and traditional learning styles, and by broadening the space and span for life-long learning opportunities. The Math4Mobile development endeavors to engage all students with mathematical ideas. It provides a collection of tools that could be included in a variety of activities to support students’ mathematical skills, conceptual understanding, and creative mathematical thinking.

Computerized tools have been shown to provide important support for achieving these goals. Three decades of using technology in mathematics education provide clear evidence that the tools designed to support a well-defined educational agenda were the most successful ones. In general, technology achieves its most important gains in settings in which it is available for long periods of time, and when it is designed to be incorporated regularly into the learning process. I suspect that an important reason for the slow pace of change in this area is that ubiquitous, long-term access to technology is yet to be achieved in most learning environments.

Given the high rate of increase in the number of mobile phone owners worldwide, the computational capability of most phones, and the widely available communication infrastructure, we have been looking for ways to turn the available and relatively cheap personal mobile technology into a relevant learning tool in and out of school.

Meeting the challenges of computation, communication, and usability

Understanding the computing potential: The Math4Mobile project has been developed based on VisualMath, which was found to be a successful technology-based curriculum for changing the ways students learn geometry, function-based school algebra, and calculus. The Math4Mobile project started as yet another cycle of development of already existing WEB tools, but working under the constraints of the new hardware and enablers has led us to ideas and challenges beyond hardware-related problems. To support cognitive empowerment for the learning of mathematical content, our first challenge was to plan a variety of well-recognized useful applications. Design decisions were to focus on:

1. Applications that have already been recognized as successful in using technology for learning: Graph2Go, a graphing calculator that serves a wide range of users at different levels and in various fields of learning; Quad2Go, a dynamic geometry environment that allows constructing and analyzing while dynamically changing the various available quadrilaterals, mostly supporting primary school geometry.
2. Applications that could be useful in motivating learning out of the classroom: Sketch2Go and Fit2Go, which support recording and mathematically analyzing temporal processes that students might face in a task out of class.
3. Design applications supporting scientific inquiry; all applications designed to include embedded feedback in a variety of representations, to encourage observation of multiple examples, and at the same time to support the development of mathematical skills through intensive practice (for example, Solve2Go).
4. Applications that first and foremost can be easily operated “on the go,” with a numeric keypad being the only necessary requirement, although navigation keys can also be used. Because typing mathematical signs and expressions can be extremely tedious, our design strategy is to provide ready to work but easy to alter mathematical objects such as expression or equation clusters, iconic graphs, geometric shapes, etc.
5. Applications that are appropriate to use by children and that comply with hardware, resources, and infrastructure constrains. Our intention is to develop for everyone, closing rather than widening the social gaps in the process. Thus, we plan for minimal air time and the lowest possible end, and for widely used hardware that does not require compromising on essential learning goals. We chose J2ME as the development language because it supports the visual mathematical representations assumed to be essential for conceptual learning and design that works for users of small screens.

Understanding the communication potential: According to social-cultural theories of learning, collaborative thinking is an essential component of scientific inquiry. Whereas the social studies and humanities are better known for providing opportunities for sharing, mathematics is assumed to be practiced and developed individually. The choice of mobile phones provides an opportunity to create incentives for collaboration that are authentic learning processes for a community of math learners at all levels. We examine designs of three types of communication:

1. Each Math4Mobile application includes Phone 2 Phone collaboration via SMS center. Students can use it to share their work, post it to receive critical comments from their peers, analyze and propose improvements of others’ work, and submit their work to the teacher.
2. We identified two challenges for our future development work: multi-user communication, where users can share their work interactively, and communication between phones and computers. Advancing in this direction, we developed the Click2Go Classroom Interaction System, currently piloted in schools. Click2Go allows students to use the local communication infrastructure to respond to teachers’ prompts and present the collated students’ responses to promote whole-group discussion.
3. Another channel of communication, the Augmented Textbook, works with the Math4Mobile application to augment paper textbooks with mobile applications that include interactive diagrams, a counterpart to printed diagrams.

Understanding the Usability Potential: Pilot experiments involving teachers in schools and pre-service teachers were part of our development work. In each experiment we designed activities relevant to the curricular agenda. The learning was recorded and analyzed, and usually the results showed the direction of required improvements of the application. After analyzing the learning and teaching opportunities, we design scenarios that can be relevant to the following pedagogical and technological variables:

• Space: activity suited for use in class, in and around school, or anywhere
• Size: to be used by an individual student, in collaboration in a small group, in the course of a whole-class discussion
• Learning mode: exploring, practicing skills, or solving problems
• Teacher’s role: teachers could use the tools and the activity to deliver instruction, moderate group collaboration, assess individual performance, or observe student activities out of the classroom
• Means of use: online, offline, asynchronous, synchronous
• Infrastructure media components available (ubiquity): the ideal setting for the activity also includes, in addition to the personal mobile phone, a “smart board,” a website, a desktop application, and an augmented textbook
• Phone resources: camera, calculator, stop watch, dedicated applications

Educational impact: Patterns, scalability, and sustainability

Since 2008/2009, downloads range from hundreds to thousands monthly, the more frequently downloaded being Graph2Go and Solve2Go. Most applications can be downloaded from the site free of charge. There are many options to download the applications from a variety of sites that adopted them as favorite educational resources. The applications also spread virally. We therefore assume that the above figures are only partial.

The geographic breadth spans the globe and includes India with thousands of downloads yearly, and African countries (Cote D’Ivoire, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique), South American countries (Argentina, Mexico), and Asian countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines) with hundreds of downloads a year. Clearly, the development is attractive, sought after, and useful in rural locations and in less developed communities.

Users: We suspect that the applications are being used by students in a wide range of ages and settings. We learn from teachers around the globe who occasionally write to us about their use of the applications in their schools, from teachers’ centers using the applications for professional development at teachers’ workshops, from secondary and higher education students reporting and asking for further improvements, and from resources being created for Math4Mobile independently by users.

Development challenges

The lack of standards has been a major difficulty. Several years ago Symbian and J2ME were supported by the majority of mobile phones. This is not the case anymore, and since 2010 the market share of Android and iPhone systems keeps growing. This continuing fragmentation is a major obstacle for the scalability and sustainability of the development. It requires constant investment in parallel development (different languages and mathematical packages) for a variety of systems and hardware, that have different capabilities even when operating under similar system. It also requires software verifications and quality assurance that are not easy to do in educational environments.

Developing high-quality applications is relatively expensive. Math4Mobile, an innovative experiment, has been developed in an academic R&D center by faculty and students. To scale it up, it requires economical models that would support free personal use and also provide sustained support for further development and implementation.

Designing human-computer interfaces that take into account the yet unknown health effects of extensive use of mobiles by children. For example, current design is aimed at maximizing offline use.

Investing in a variety of application types such as games and location-based applications that have been shown to be important for learning.

Pedagogical challenges

At present, educational systems own the hardware and software required for learning. Mobile personal phones are a different ball park, in which the centralized models do not seem to work well.

Taking into account the new meaning of students working with their own personal tool is a challenge. A major threat to teachers is the misuse of the communication tools during school time. Another threat is use of applications that students upload to their mobiles (or of resources such as video clips) that interrupt class work. Yet another popular use that can be interpreted as misuse of a cell phone in a classroom setting is recording with the camera and mailing paper resources. It requires imagination and creativity to turn these affordances into constructive learning situations. Projects that involve children in the design could be important in establishing new learning norms.

Tools should support teachers in managing the load of students’ personal work. Following the first design experiment, a full archive system was developed for each application. It was required because the traffic of work sent by SMS between students and the teacher was enormous. The development of Click2Go, which collects and organizes personal data on a server that can be accessed by the teacher, is another model for organizing assessment. Further enhancement of ubiquity that would easily make the same applications work with a variety of media is essential.

Math4Mobile provides and updates activities and teaching ideas at its site. We hope to create professional development models using new means that assume the active involvement of such media as blogging, mobile communication, and sharing mLearning scenarios used around the world throughout social networks. We continue developing instructional materials to be used with existing curricular standards and platforms that allow phone users to communicate with colleagues and mentors worldwide, even when they have no access to computers (as we recently prototyped in India with www.mobilegurukul.org).

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I am grateful for the chance to contribute to the current debate on the potential for Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in education in Africa. It is clearly a debate about important issues.

Mobile phones hold out enormous promise as the single ICT most likely to deliver education in Africa, and to do so on a sustainable, equitable and scalable basis. I think however that so far, we have not often seen much progress beyond fixed-term, small-scale and subsidised pilots and it is worth exploring whether mobile phones can really deliver their promise.

Delivering education in Africa using mobile phones probably strikes governments, institutions and practitioners as easy and obvious because mobile phones and mobile networks are almost universally accessible and reliable in places where environment, economics, infrastructure and security might variously militate against any other ICTs and where the demographics of mobile phone ownership, access and competence, unlike most other ICTs, takes us near to the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ – the actual ‘bottom of the pyramid’ is of course populated by people who can’t even afford mobile phones! Furthermore, mobile phones are an individual ICT not an institutional or corporate ICT and are not predicated on access to colleges, business centres, cyber-cafes or maybe even cities. Therefore, learning on mobile phones should work.

The current World Bank Group and the African Development Bank study is intended “to raise awareness and stimulate action, especially among African governments and development practitioners”. These are indeed vital prerequisites but perhaps ‘critical awareness’ and ‘rigorously evidence-based action’ are even more vital. This is important debate is often characterised by simplifications, misplaced optimism and untested assertions. Hopefully this piece will strike a better balance.

My contention is that whilst many good projects using mobile devices to support learning, by definition, do good work and thus deserve to be praised and celebrated, our problems start when we try to understand these projects, when we try to reason and infer about these projects, when we try to explain and disseminate them in the hope that we can reproduce and replicate them. This is all the more worrying as we overlook the far larger number of less successful projects or when we group, organise and cluster projects in order to find common generalisable themes, forces, causes and mechanisms. Therein lies our problem with scale, sustainability and equity.

Something is wrong and we need to dig beneath the surface. What are my reasons for advocating such caution?

Firstly, of course, failure often goes unreported, unpublished, and unacknowledged, and common impression is that careers and reputations are not built on failures however interesting or thought-provoking. Furthermore, many projects are doomed to success and are reported accordingly. Funders, agencies, ministries, officials, researchers and others will have all invested much prestige and resource giving projects the necessary momentum and visibility, and failure becomes unthinkable or inconceivable.

A common saying maintains that, “if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Watching evaluations in South Africa and Kenya made me think this is true of the mind-sets we bring to our analysis and evaluation of projects. An educationalist will see educational explanations, a technologist will see technological ones, a policy-maker will see policy ones and so on. Our inferences about success are conditioned by our backgrounds.

Sometimes these predispositions are built in projects from the outset. In looking at siting or sampling, people from different backgrounds and organisations bring their own ideas about where to site their cluster of project interventions in the hope of getting maximum generality from limited resource but in doing so they bring to the fore, those variables they think significant (and thereby make them significant) and push others to the background. So class size, network coverage or educational content will appear important because they were built in that they would be!

Furthermore, the dream of successful large-scale sustainable learning with mobile devices has been haunted by high-profile successes like mPesa and Grameen. These successes create the expectation and the pressure that learning with mobile devices should be a worldwide runaway success.

On top of that, some years ago, I and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme looked back at reports of mobile learning research projects from around the world and concluded that the researchers were not always very competent and trained in project evaluation. Their evaluations were often fairly informal, disconnected from project objectives, bolted on as late extras, unfocussed and not informed by the relevant literature or expertise. Also, funders and donors are not necessarily trained or critical readers of monitoring and evaluation reports. Below the executive summary and the headlines might be many caveats and nuances that get in the way of simple prescriptions and these get lost.

Of course, in saying this, I am caught between funders who want results, policy makers who want simple robust bases for policy, the development community talking about predictable unexpected consequences, social scientists telling us reality and experience are contingent and postmodernists telling us that the grand narratives of the Western European mind, of which development is undoubtedly one, are all broken and dead.

So our first conclusion must be that our inferences about success and about critical success factors in learning with mobile devices are fairly shaky.

If we look at the mechanics of mobile learning projects in particular and ask about sustainability, things do not get better.

Firstly, funders fund projects, and understandably they try to fund good projects, and as soon as their funding finishes so does most of their influence. This makes moving projects towards sustainability problematic in practical terms. It might however be starting from the wrong perspective all along. Perhaps instead of funding good projects in the hope that they will become sustainable, funders should fund sustainable projects in the hope that they will become good.

Meaning that funders should pay more attention to the host, the target, the destination, to the culture, values and expectations of the people who will inherit and support the project and less to the concrete specifics of the projects and its innovations. Perhaps funders should actually avoid known innovators and early adopters on the basis that these people have least in common with the rank-and-file staff who will institutionalise, embed and appropriate educational change and have least in common with the ethos of their institution.

Most mobile learning projects, especially research projects, have been based on providing learners with the necessary devices, especially first generation projects when devices were rare, expensive and complex. This was sensible in producing more rigorous evidence in coming from a uniform technology platform but not in producing evidence that was transferable into the world where funds did not exist to continue to provide learners with devices.

Those mobile learning project funded by corporates, especially from within their corporate social responsibility budgets, suffered from similar problems, compounded by the shorter time-scales that characterised the corporate and commercial world. Fixed-term projects, either funded as research or as corporate social responsibility, taught us little about sustainability. By definition, they were not intended to teach us about sustainability. The fact that projects run more smoothly and produce cleaner less noisy data with provided devices rather than learner devices, that they often use the enthusiasm of project staff and the novelty of innovation, has instead created very false and contrived environments and evidence that does not transfer.

If we could produce evidence that was convincing and relevant, we then have the problem of what to do with it!

In countries of big government, where society expects government support from cradle to grave, the role of evidence is at least in theory straightforward, namely researchers take evidence to government, this impacts on policy and then releases or diverts public resources. In fact, informing policy and changing practice are much more complex than this, involving various ways of exploiting expertise as well as evidence but it is still being basically a political process underpinned by a particular set of ideals about the responsibilities of government.

In countries of small government, however, the role of evidence, expertise and experts is more complex and problematic. The players in any possible mobile learning space might include network operators, publishers, handset manufacturers, maybe government, maybe not, and possibly social entrepreneurs and various kinds of community activists. We must work towards models of learning with mobile devices that make money since this ensures that they are sustainable, big money in the case of scenarios that include corporates and small money in the case of scenarios that include social entrepreneurs.

Corporates, of course, each have a specific focus, be it handsets, content or connectivity, and so the challenge for advocates of learning with mobiles devices is moving the argument forward and fostering collaborations, with evidence and whatever else works, with these players. We must recognise however that even if a commercial operation can take learning to the mythic next billion subscribers of the global South, there will still be parts of the curriculum or parts of the population left uncovered, where governments must still recognise some responsibility and recognise the potential to build human capital and potential for the greater good, if only we knew the language, the issues and the arguments that would change their course.

The alternative is working with social entrepreneurs, those individuals embedded within their own communities, prepared to blend making a profit and delivering a social service, perhaps analogous to community teachers in rural schools in Kenya or bare-foot doctors in China. The challenge for advocates of learning with mobile devices is finding out how to design or adapt those devices or applications that hit the spot where market and education might just overlap.

A colleague recently remarked that every technology embodies an ideology; I realised that the implication was that every educational technology embodied a pedagogy, embodies a specific set of ideas about teaching and learning. This ideology or pedagogy may be that of the designers or the manufacturers; the technology may however be appropriated by users and learners and the ideology or pedagogy embodied within the technology becomes theirs not the original or intended one. This issue represents one of the challenges to transferring strategies for educational technology from one culture to another, even from one community or sub-culture to another, especially when we recognise how many slightly different communities and sub-cultures inhabit phonespace and cyberspace.

Finally, one obvious way to enhance sustainability and scale is to consciously exploit learners’ own devices, to base national or institutional strategy around the phones that individuals choose, own and carry everywhere. Of course, institutional culture and regulations may actually prohibit phones on the premises and much needs to be done in order to address issues of standards, infrastructure and performance, of access and equity, of content and training but the main hurdle is teachers’ and officials’ perceptions about loss of control and agency in the class-room, about suddenly letting the animals run the zoo. Fortunately some countries, South Africa, for example, are starting to explore these issues and make progress on a major prerequisite to sustainable learning with mobile devices.

There’s a lot going on in this blog and some prevailing assumptions and generalisations may have been addressed with just a different set of assumptions and generalisations; the aim was however not to convince but to unsettle, and perhaps to encourage more caution and scepticism. Learning with mobile devices somewhere near the bottom of the pyramid is still our best bet.

In this context, we are interested in exploring the following questions:

• Where and how are mobile devices or other affordable technologies being used for access to learning materials and collaboration? What lessons can we learn from these experiences?
• What are the key challenges for the use of these technologies in education in Africa? What are the critical success factors for their effective use?
• What recommendations should be made to policy makers, regulators, donors and other stakeholders if technology is to be used to support learning and collaboration in an equitable, sustainable and scalable manner?

The next several posts will look at some of these questions and we hope that they will trigger discussion on some of the issues they raise. We invite responses questions as well as the sharing of both successes and failures.

This conversation is part of the eTranform Africa initiative.

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