Education For All Through Electronic Media

EDUCATION FOR ALL THROUGH ELECTRONIC MEDIA *Malik Tariq Malik

Abstract

The digital revolution is driving major changes in the way of education produced and delivered. Dynamic and constant changes in technology and knowledge require that education evolve from being "terminal" into a life-long and on-going educational activity. Sharp and continued falls in the cost of storing, manipulating, and transmitting information are interacting with rising relative costs of traditional

education

and

increasing

demand

for

life-long

educational services. In the early twenty-first century people was able to study what they want, when they want, where they want, and in the language they prefer, electronically. Pakistan needs to train its educationists and Universities’ teachers in analytical techniques necessary to operate successfully in a market. Pakistan has building on strong technological skills from lower administrative level to executive levels across the country. In this process Pakistan will become a higher profile in the emerging global market for educational services. The World Bank can play a significant role in promoting, financing, and even producing electronic distance education services helping make the vision of quality education for all reality. Technology, Educational Costs, and Electronic Distance Education Dynamic and constant changes in technology and knowledge require that education evolve from being "terminal" into a life-long and on-going activity. Accelerating technological change requires continuing education for a worker to remain competitive in the labour market as well as their living standard. Without continuous learning, people of all kinds will find their human capital rapidly depreciates, with a corresponding fall in the command and to achieve the goals. Information delivery and education

are becoming essential services that need to be made available on demand, just like any other utility. _________________________________________________ * Author is student of M. Phil Mass Communication and presently working in the department of Commerce, AIOU, Islamabad.

Traditional means of education are not adequate to meet the needs of large populations for lifelong learning, even in rich countries. In poorer countries, education for all, at least past the primary level, looks like an unrealistic dream if conventional strategies are pursued. Even where available, the quality of education leaves much to be desired and is often declining as costs rise faster than incomes and tax revenues. The rate of increase in the cost of education in the West has consistently outpaced the rate of inflation. This indicates a lack of productivity increase in a crucial sector of what is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based economy. The rising relative price of education, indeed of education in general, is alarming educators and university administrators who seek to provide the best quality education at an affordable price. While the relative price of conventional education is rising, the digital revolution has been decreasing the cost of storing, manipulating, and transmitting information by 50 percent every 18 months, with no end in sight. This technological wave is now driving major changes in the way education is produced and delivered. At the heart of this change is the convergence of the once distinct media of image, sound, books, and computer networks into digital multimedia. This is making the world's knowledge base accessible anywhere on the planet through satellites, coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, and even conventional copper wire through new techniques to pump large amounts of information down the "last mile". Even the book "is being rapidly transformed into an electronic learning tool that utilizes sound, images, and motion in addition to a printed text" (1992).

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Online

educational

"communities"

already provide

on-demand and

customized education to subscribers. In the early twenty-first century, people will be able to study what they want, from whom they want, when they want, where they want, and in the language they prefer, electronically. Electronic distance education (EDE) will be not a matter of science fiction, but the lifeblood of the worldwide knowledge-based economy. The marketplace for many educational services will be global, with great increases in the quality of education available to the individual at lower real costs per capita than conventional education today. According to Barber (1992) "Computer, television, cable, satellite, laser, fiber-optic, and microchip technologies (will) combine to create a vast interactive communications and information network that can potentially give every person on earth access to every other person". Barber also describe that technology today makes it possible for students in an African village to access the same "global brain" of the world's information resources as those in New York, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, or Sao Paulo, the "hardware", and perhaps more importantly, the "software" of social, political, economic and organizational arrangements to permit this are lagging well behind the technological potential. Realizing that potential should be a major goal of global institutions like the World Bank. Global Trends in Distance Education The latest trends in education show that universities have started catering to a wide variety of geographically dispersed students. There is a growing interdependence among institutions as well as technologies. Many wellknown national universities will turn international level by offering courses via EDE, after that a new culture of global education is being born. We will soon see a number of institutions specializing in international education and training.

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Several institutions specializing in distance education have earned national and international preeminence in the academic field. Allama Iqbal Open University, with headquarters in Islamabad, has gained worldwide attention and many countries have developed their own open universities on this model. Founded in 1974, the AIOU is now the largest Pakistani Open University, employing a full-time staff of over 2000 included employees of its Regional Offices all over the country. Although television is used extensively, about 90% of the material used by the AIOU is printbased. Face-to-face encounters with tutors in a large number of regional centers

supplement

print

and

televised

materials.

Through

its

international repute the university link with other countries like Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia the AIOU is active in that countries today, but it currently relies largely on print materials and video tapes plus meetings with tutors. In the United States, National Technological University (NTU) and the Mind Extension University (MEU) rely heavily on satellite television to distribute the courses of a group of participating conventional universities. NTU was founded in 1984 and it offers a wide range of advanced science and

engineering

courses

using

live,

satellite-based

narrowcast

instructional television, sometimes backed by E-mail. About 45 technical universities

in

North

America

uplink

to

NTU's

transponder

using

compressed digital television and there are downlinks in these same universities as well as some 500 sites in high-tech companies and governmental agencies. Both degree courses and continuing education seminars are offered. NTU seeks to be fully global by the year 2000. MEU employs a similar concept based on satellite and cable television, focusing mainly on technical and business courses, some of which permit interaction with the instructor and other students by telephone and/or Email. Of particular interest is the Educational Technology Leadership masters' degree program established in 1988 at George Washington University using MEU to meet a growing need among education professionals to understand, manage, and use electronic educational technologies. The student body for this program is international. 4

Balthazar writes in his article (1992) that “Research on delivery modes and their correlation to student achievement outcomes has shown that students learn better via tele-training mode than face-to-face instruction”. Course design and overall quality of instruction are also usually better in EDE courses than in traditional classroom instruction. The new electronic technologies such as CD-ROM interactive disks, computer bulletin boards, and multimedia hyper-text available over the global Internet using the Mosaic interface and the World Wide Web "can provide students with far greater involvement in the process of learning and allow them the exercise of far greater control over that process than is possible in many traditional learning environments." He again describes that "Integrate sound, motion, image, and text creates a rich new learning environment awash with possibility and a clear potential to increase student involvement in the learning process. The interactive capabilities of both program and delivery systems allow for feedback, dialogue, and on-going assessment that are impossible in all but the most localized and direct applications of resident instruction". Electronic Media for Distance Education Maule (1993) describes; it is a common misconception that face-to-face classroom instruction can be videotaped and distributed to produce multimedia-based EDE courses. The truth is that it takes considerable time and effort as well as expertise to design and develop quality multimedia EDE. Once developed, however, the course materials may be used again and again. Thus, in the long run, despite the initial investment in time and money, EDE is very cost-effective. In order to make them more effective, EDE courses should be designed for maximum teacherstudent and student-student interaction. To be more attractive to the adult population, course content should be relevant and challenging, transmitted visuals should be of high quality, and the cost should be less than face-to-face instruction. The use of a variety of media within and among courses should be considered during course design and curriculum

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planning stage. Certain concepts from traditional classroom learning that are

absent

in

conventional

distance

learning

modes

can

be

accommodated with computer communications. Currently, a variety of media are used in EDE. They include instructional television, audio-graphics, compressed video, computer conferencing, and audio/video conferencing. The new technologies entering EDE arena are all digital in nature (e.g. hypermedia, computer networks, integrated data systems, digital television). In future "virtual" classrooms and worldwide lecture halls will be the norm in DE. Paulsen (1987) describes a virtual school as an information system. "This entails the gathering, processing, storing, transmitting, and presenting of information. These activities may be performed manually by people or automatically by computers." A virtual school will not exist as a physical entity with all the accompanying paraphernalia but it can perform all the functions and assume the responsibilities of a regular school. Computermediated instruction improves teacher-student interaction and thus enhances the learning process. Due to its objective nature, students feel free to express their views and opinions on any subject matter. Students using computer networks to communicate with their peers contribute to both learning and teaching processes. One of the biggest advantages of electronic networks is the rapid dissemination of information. Spreading and sharing of new thoughts and ideas get new results via networks -- the wider reach and unbiased inputs obtained through network-based interactive communication enhances the whole spectrum of educational experience. Networking has the added benefit of information sharing among educators and researchers. Users from all over the world are able to communicate and share ideas. It will also bring together knowledge and research from all corners of the globe to a common platform. This could eventually create global standards in scientific fields.

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The Internet accessible all over the world via cyber cable etc. and universities, research institutions, libraries, small and large businesses and corporations, and millions of individuals around the world. The most powerful technologies, intended for gathering information worldwide over the Internet are: E- mail, Mosaic, and videoconferencing. Through E-mail one can reach any recipient having an E- mail address -- on the order of 20 million people in over 146 countries and growing at about 8% a month -- delivered within several minutes by sending him or her a text message, which can be returned. Computers with full TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internetworking Protocol) Internet connections allowing direct access to other computers and the information they contain (a growing proportion of the world's knowledge base) totaled an estimated 2.2 million at the end of 1993, linked together in some 35,000 networks in 78 countries as of May 1994. The NBER of networks in the United States increased by 160% in 1993, the rate of growth outside the U.S. was even faster, 183 percent (Internet Society, 1994). Users of Internet can instantly exchange text, graphics, sound, video or data with anyone, anytime, and anywhere, and this has been made quite simple by "front-end" interfaces such as Mosaic, a software developed by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois and available free over the Internet. Using Mosaic and the World Wide Web developed at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Internet users can easily scan worldwide multimedia computer sites and retrieve necessary information. Resources will be at researchers' fingertips within a matter of minutes. Even full-color, full-motion video can be retrieved with Mosaic. This makes asynchronous, "just-in-time" individualized education which can be retrieved around the globe a real possibility. "The next Internet technology supporting distance learning is the organization of audio and video conferences. Special (commercial and publicly available) software allows establishing multi-point connections with possibility of translation audio and video data through the Internet. Such technology may be closely compared with interactive TV, where the

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recipient may intervene in a TV discussion, but be located many thousands of miles away. And note that costs of organizing Internet conferences can be much less than transmission of broadcast TV learning programs. According to Miller (1992) that Cyberspace offers limitless possibilities for education in general and EDE in particular. The collaborative work environments created using multimedia technology will increase student interaction giving new possibilities to distance learning. Asynchronous communication made possible by computer conferencing, electronic mail, and voice mail allows students to control the time, place, and pace of study and also to interact with other students. In the coming years, EDE will undergo revolutionary changes when students will gain access to large databases and dial-up and on-demand information services.

Electronic Distance Education in Russia Keegan (1993) in the former Soviet Union, correspondence education had been widespread and extensive for several decades, dating back to 1929. Soviet distance education involved both a number of autonomous specialized distance teaching universities and what calls the "consultation model" where study commences with a residential seminar on campus at an institution also providing conventional education, following which students study at home from the learning materials provided. Home study was interspersed at regular intervals with on-campus consultations. Correspondence played little role in the second, and predominant group. Keegan indicates that in 1985 approximately one third of the 5.1 million students in higher education were in "correspondence" or evening programs. Kapelushnikov (1993) writes that a very positive legacy in the Soviet educational system is the extremely high literacy of the population and the large number of people with sophisticated technical and engineering

8

skills. But the Russian labor force lacks the analytical tools and market culture needed to be able to take full advantage of their skills in a marketoriented economy. There is thus an urgent, nationwide demand for training in such subjects as accounting, management, and finance. The return to this investment in retraining is very high. This is the basic rationale for the Russia Management and Financial Training Project recently appraised by the World Bank and developed with participation of a large number of Russian experts. The magnitude of the retraining task, with such a large population spread out over the world, and the paucity of well-trained experts in the relevant fields almost cry out for use of distance education, starting from a low level to higher. But if Russia is to use distance education, the new system and methods need to be clearly differentiated from the traditional Sovietstyle systems. In the Pakistani system a major negative legacy of correspondence education is the generally poor reputation they gave to distance education. Since many of the programs duplicated those provided by conventional higher education, "and most of the students were employed adults, complaints were heard about lower standards and correspondence education being a `second rate' form of gaining knowledge. Despite this, correspondence study is still a major component in all branches of education. Television and computer-mediated instruction and interaction could be an integral part of a modern distance education system, which could then move into fully-digital advanced technologies. The postal system being unreliable and the telephone system inefficient, instructional TV -- both broadcast and narrowcast, making extensive use of satellites -- and computer-based communication are the most suitable for EDE all over the world. So television may be used to meet the general educational needs of people at all levels. For more advanced training and education, computer network-based systems supplemented by narrowcast television

9

on the model offer significant advantages over other EDE systems. Computer networks are expanding extremely rapidly in the country and are likely to be fully integrated into educational institutions everywhere. Kapelushnikov (1993) Lessons from Germany's and Japan's post World War II economic recoveries, which were based on their strong human resources as much as on the replacement of destroyed physical capital. Russia has a large and motivated labor force. The members of this labor force know how to learn, and are eager to learn new skills which will make them effective in a market-oriented economy. Motivation is high because this is a question of survival for them -- massive unemployment threatens them if the twin challenges of privatization and (for many) conversion from defense production to civilian production cannot be met. Since Pakistan’s intellectual capacity, manpower, and technology needed to create and operate a successful multimedia-based EDE program, it has the potential to become both an exporter as well as an importer of technology and know-how once the infrastructure for a modern system of EDE will develop.

The Global Role of the World Bank in EDE What should the role of the World Bank be in promoting the use of EDE to achieve global educational objectives, such as Education for All? With the Bank's development mission, what role should it play in developing and implementing EDE? The World Bank can and does encourage its member countries to invest in education and training through a wide variety of research and publications, including the annual World Development Report, several of which, beginning with the 1980 number, have stressed the importance of investing in human resources through population, health, education, and nutrition projects. The World Bank can also play a significant role in promoting EDE by funding EDE components of educational projects in its borrowing member 10

countries. A World Bank loan supported the development all over the world’s Central Radio and Television University. The Bank's role in supporting the EDE initiative through the Management and Financial Training Project is another example of this kind of action. If successful, this project may motivate other countries to follow suit. The World Bank already offers special courses in economics and related subjects through its Economic Development Institute (EDI). Seminars, workshops, and courses are being offered to officials and administrators from many countries including Pakistan and other countries in the world. These courses are offered in several languages. In its new strategic plan, recently presented to the World Bank's Board of Directors, EDI has committed itself to increased use of video, multimedia, electronic networking, and teleconferencing. EDI can become an important node in the emerging worldwide electronic university, specializing in policymaking and implementation for economic and social development. Conclusion Most of the developing countries are unable to provide even basic education to all segments of their population. The industrialized nations cannot contain the ever-increasing costs of education, and now face the increased demands for life-long continuing education of the knowledgebased economy. EDE will be the logical solution to the imminent crisis in education all over the world. EDE can ride the technological wave of the digital revolution that could make the dream of education for all a reality. Especially in the Pakistan Electronic Distance Education is need for all disciplines.

According

to

the

Pakistani

government

policies

and

requirements to compete the world level of education the EDE is most important. The one of the Pakistani university; Allama Iqbal Open University also has the setup of distance education so this university will be able to introduce that educational system with their sources as well as strength to pour the requirements of the global education. In the Pakistan AIOU has all kind of requirements i.e. multimedia equipments, television

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and radio broadcasting studios as well as equipments so this university fully equipped for launching this system. In the Pakistan executive position holders will ready to enhance their qualification for betterment of their working place and environment but they can not do that due to lack of opportunities.

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