I will explain the project design and implementation below. First, however, I want to pose three questions to readers:

1. What funding mechanisms are most secure for telecenter sustainability?
2. Are videoconferencing training programs effective when trainees have no prior experience with these technologies?
3. What pedagogical assumptions are instilled into videoconferencing trainings and what repercussions do these assumptions cause?

THE NEED

For the first time, local schoolteachers in rural Mexico could receive teacher training, many of whom had never received formal teacher training. The non-profit planned to put these teachers through a 50-hour training course via videoconferencing tools and a satellite broadband Internet connection.

In a Mexican government program, and with assistance from the IDB, villagers from underserved areas in Mexico can receive a financial scholarship for college and a modest stipend in exchange for teaching elementary or middle school for two years in other rural communities. The program, CONAFE (which stands for National Council for to Promote Education), is a great asset to these communities who are otherwise without teachers.

The problem, however, is that the CONAFE teachers have not gone to college or received much formal training. Though the teachers are required to attend monthly seminars and receive a few weeks of training before entering the classroom, they are otherwise without preparation and come with no more than a high school education.

THE PROJECT

To solve this problem, a technology-focused LLC who provides Internet connectivity via satellite to rural villages worldwide partnered with a local NGO to open an Internet café in the largest village (about 80 families) in the area. A local social entrepreneur was selected, who bought the technological equipment from the local NGO at low interest rates, and the Internet café quickly opened. Then, the local NGO partnered with the non-profit who trains undereducated teachers to put the CONAFE teachers through a 50-hour training course via videoconferencing tools.

Considering the unfamiliarity with computers that the CONAFE teachers have, it was apparent that they would have to rely heavily on the local Internet café owner to help them connect to a videoconferencing platform and to use the computers. Some of the teachers had never used a computer before, and even the most advanced had only used them a dozen times. The idea was that through this training, the CONAFE schoolteachers would not only become better teachers, but they would learn the basics of computer and Internet usage, invaluable skills without which they would be lost once entering college.

DIFFICULTIES AND QUESTIONS

Unfortunately, however, the Internet service was cut after just three months of service to the café. The cost of the service increased ten-fold in the contract with the satellite service provider after three months, a key detail in the contract that the local NGO had overlooked. Now, it has been over one hundred days that the Internet café has been without service. The social entrepreneur feels disgruntled and embarrassed in front of the other villagers, and wants nothing to do with the local NGOs efforts to reconnect the café with new service providers.

Without this connection, the videoconferencing training obviously stopped. Consequently, it is unclear whether the training would have been effective. The first training took place just one week before the Internet was cut off. I was at the training and afterwards I had a series of question regarding the program. How would the mentor relationship between the teacher trainer from the non-profit and the recipient CONAFE teachers affect their self-confidence and later self-development efforts? How would the training affect the teachers’ actual actions in the classroom? How much freedom would the CONAFE teachers have to modify the national curriculums that they were mandated to teach? Was a certification from the non-profit organization enough to motivate the CONAFE teachers to participate in the program? Would the certificate actually prove to be helpful in securing future employment?

It is impossible to find these answers from the short-lived project in Mexico. What experiences have you, reader, had that could shed light on the effectiveness of videoconferencing training over international boundaries? And can telecenters be financially sustainable in rural villages as they are in urban cities in developing countries? What increases the probability of financial success? If not funded through user fees, what are implications of government sponsorship or subsidies in telecenter projects?

I’d appreciate your comments and feedback from your own experiences.

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The Salon was a great chance to get very practical advice from leading experts in the fields of both education and ICT4D. Here are key points I raised in my opening remarks and input received from participants:

Why we’re exploring eLearning solutions

• Skyrocketing Demand for Higher Education. Demand for higher education is expected to rise from 48 million seats in 1990 to 159 million seats by 2025 in Asia and Africa.
• Emergence of Affordable and Appropriate Technologies. Low-cost netbooks and Nettop PCs and the proliferation of broadband and 3G networks transform the economics of providing access to e-learning solutions.
• Potential for Disruptive Business Models. Over the last several years, SSG has developed some innovative business models for delivering broadband sustainably in rural areas of developing countries, like SSG’s experience with the USAID Last Mile Initiative in Sri Lanka.

A disruptive business model for eLearning

Based on that experience, I put forward the idea of a disruptive business model for higher education delivery that had 3 characteristics:

1. A key element of the business model is the idea of moving away from per credit hour tuition and towards a monthly subscription fee. Monthly subscription fee service with 24/7 instructor support available online. Using a subscription fee structure would benefit students by encouraging them to complete coursework as quickly as possible. The availability of instructor support at any time enables students to fit their studies around work, family and other commitments. From a business standpoint, a subscription revenue model also better reflects the cost structure of maintaining a platform that includes instructor support on a 24/7 basis.
2. Both direct and shared access network for users. Here the idea is that better off students in urban/peri-urban areas would be able to access courses from home using a Netbook and a broadband connection. While that might be workable in Rural and lower-income students would have access through a network of franchised shared access centers.
3. Focus on General Education requirements. One way to ensure that such a model does not compete directly with developing country HEIs would be to focus on general education requirement courses rather than creating a degree-conferring program. The idea is that this both reduces costs for the student, who can complete a significant portion of degree-related work before matriculating to a bricks and mortar university and it also expands the number of available university seats. This is the model of straighterline.com and it enables the company to partner with universities and expand their reach rather than directly compete with them.

We received some great feedback from the audience on both the underlying assumptions and the business model itself.

Look at that eLearning idea

The technology of eLearning

On the technology side, it was pointed out that caching or USB sticks may offer an additional cost-saving mechanism for delivery of content in rural areas where the cost of broadband access may still be prohibitive. This makes a lot of sense as it is very easy to upload lectures, text and even exercises on to a USB stick and then rely on broadband connections only for chats, email and discussion boards. Another important point raised was the use of 3G phones (perhaps uploaded off of DVDs) to offer the delivery of lectures so that students can watch lectures while traveling to/from work each day.

I think these are very important points. For this model to work, it needs to be low-cost, but also offer the prospect of a consistent experience. USB drives would allow a student to use an icafe or telecenter PC, but still have the same learning experience as someone using a dedicated netbook. Also, the advantage of having course materials available in a mobile environment (whether through downloads or off of DVDs) is a significant benefit for students who may prefer to listen to a course lecture while riding the bus to work.

Infrastructure for eLearning

We also discussed whether a franchised shared access center was necessary or worth the investment. It was pointed out that the use of USB sticks would allow for a standardized learning environment, irrespective of the machine or its location. In this case, it may be more cost effective to have a distributor-style (or authorized retailer) relationship with existing icafes and telecenters rather than build new franchises. This approach makes a lot of sense in peri-urban areas where there may be fully commercial icafes. In rural areas where no current icafes or telecenters exist (or are too expensive), it may make more sense to have a franchised operation to ensure that rural students can affordably access coursework and materials.

The buyer demand for eLearning

While we assumed that there is a global demand for higher education, it became clear through the discussion that the proposed model may be more appropriate for Asia as opposed to Africa. Asian cultures tend to place a higher value on education so they may be more receptive to this model. Also, as a rule, most Asian countries have a higher teledensity and higher ICT skills base, so technology may be less of an impediment. Another key point is that in Africa there is a tradition of students being paid to attend university – obviously our model depends on a willingness for students and families to pay.

I think these are absolutely critical points and not ones we had considered when including Africa as part of our model. Our experience in this space is largely in South and Southeast Asia, so our assumptions are built on those markets. I do not think this model is viable in countries where there is no tradition (formal or informal) for paying for education services.

Accreditation and eLearning

Another key point in the discussion revolved around the importance of both regulatory and ‘market’ accreditation. In our model we propose addressing the regulatory accreditation issue through partnerships with national and US universities. With regard to the market accreditation, close relationships with key employers will be critical to success. If the employers feel that students who take courses through our proposed model are well-prepared for the workforce it will greatly increase our model’s legitimacy.

It was pointed out that in some professions, eg nursing, there may be a preference for a degree-conferring program with specialized coursework. Here, I think we would need to see what the level of demand actually is. Becoming a degree-conferring institution is a major investment of time and money, so there would have to be a very high level of demand to justify that investment. It would also put our model in direct competition with host country universities, which could create further complications in obtaining the necessary accreditation.

Concluding Thoughts:

The feedback from the Technology Salon has been invaluable as we seek to develop and refine this business model further. I think the input shows we may be on the right track, but we still have quite a ways to go before we have a business model that we can translate into a bankable business plan.

Beginning with innovators like Seymour Papert, and extending through the One Laptop Per Child program, which claimed to be a direct descendant of his work, there is an additional push to move computers to a one-to-one basis with children. That computers could actually supplant the top-down knowledge transfer usually practiced to a more self-directed exploration of knowledge. But reliant on one-to-one computer saturation, this specialized effort has always been restrained by the massive costs to allocate and support such technology diffusion.

But why have a monolithic focus on computers? What about mobile phones?

Today there is a mobile phone revolution in the developing world. From the rural Maasai to the slum dwellers of Mumbai, poor people are acquiring mobile phones by themselves – without the government subsidies of the telecenter era. In fact, mobiles represent a huge shifting the technology deployment burden from the state to private companies and individual consumers.

And yet saturation levels are nearing one-to-one in the developed world already, and gaining quickly in the urban areas of the developing world. Because of their relative low costs and low operating needs, its now a given that mobile phones will always out number computers. In addition, phones are gaining in capacity and computing power, with high-end smart phones rivaling some of the low-end netbooks already.

Could it be that mobile phones offer developing country governments a better learning tool and more educational benefits that computers?

This month, we will have two respected discussants explore this topic:

Dr. Robert B. Kozma
Dr. Kozma has directed or co-directed more than 25 projects that have examined the impact of ICT on teaching and learning and developed advanced computer environments for education.

Michael Trucano:
Mike Trucano is the World Bank’s Senior ICT and Education Policy Specialist, providing support to World Bank education projects with ICT-related ‘components’, and is involved in a variety of research activities.

Please join us for what we all expect to be a lively and informative conversation – your input can start right now.

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