Technological Infrastructure and Use of ICT in Education in ... - ADEA

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Technological Infrastructure and Use of ICT in Education in Africa: an overview 115 economic life of these countries. 14 The BFI in South Africa will be the first major project in literacy and adult basic education to use ICTs to help illiterate, unschooled, and out-of-school youth and adults (Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide, see www1.oecd.org/media/published). Dodds (1996) carried out a worldwide study of 73 projects in non-formal education using distance education, 31 of which were from Africa. Extensive and growing use is being made off distance education methods to carry out non-formal and adult basic education. Africa has the technology and is rapidly gaining access to new technologies that will increase the number of learning opportunities for adults, ultimately improving the quality of life of those involved. However, there appears to be little evidence that governments are prepared to invest significant resources in such programmes, signifying an apparent lack of attention to this critical issue. Although incapable of teaching literacy on its own, radio is used extensively in adult basic education as a backup to conventional teaching methods. The advantages of radio for ABE are its wide distribution and the fact that, for illiterate adults, it is much more widely obtainable than any other distance education medium (Lauglo, 2001). In Uganda, of the adults participating in functional adult literacy courses, approximately 40% said they had a working radio (Okech, Carr-Hill, Katahoire, Kakooza & Ndidde, 1999, in Lauglo, 2001), and many more are likely to have listening access to a working radio (Lauglo, 2001). Adult working sessions can be coordinated with relevant radio transmissions, allowing direct support to the ABE teaching, by for example, giving learners further insight into the subject matter and providing an entertainment component to liven 14. While both the role of ICT in adult education and the importance of ICT skills and technological literacy in today’s world should not be underestimated, it is also important that the acquisition of ICT skills not be seen as a panacea in the context of development and of enhancing employment opportunities in particular. Research in South Africa has indicated that many adults have unrealistic expectations of the outcomes of basic computer training courses and many assume that once they have basic computer skills they will no longer have difficulty finding employment. While technological literacy is increasingly a requirement for employment this alone is not a sufficient condition, especially for those with low levels of general education, and many other, often structural factors, need to be addressed. Those providing the education and training should carefully mediate expectations about new possibilities once ICT skills have been acquired. If not, ICT skills training may in some instances be disempowering for those already marginalized. 12. ICT and Adult/Basic Education
116 Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning up and support literacy classes. However, such coordination can be difficult to achieve, as was experienced in the Ghana literacy programme (Siabi-Mensah, 2000) (see Box 15 below). 12. ICT and Adult/Basic Education Box 15: Ghana: Use of Radio in National Literacy and Functional Skills Development The National Functional Literacy Programme (NFLP) was created by the Ghanaian government in 1986 to coordinate all non-formal education activities. Emerging from the NFLP was the Literacy and Functional Skills Project (LFSP), which was launched in 1992. The aim of this project was to improve the quality of life of poor people in Ghana, especially the rural poor and women, and to reduce the level of illiteracy among the 5.6 million adult illiterates in the country. This programme had a radio component, the purpose of which was to support classroom teaching and discussion with more detailed information than the facilitator could provide. Until 1996, various problems were experienced which meant that the radio support did not play a very meaningful role in the process. Because radio was considered very important in supporting teaching and learning of literacy, in 1996 the Use of Radio to Support Functional Literacy project was initiated. For radio to provide effective support to the learning of literacy, it was expected that: • There would be radio lessons on selected themes, arranged sequentially to follow the teaching of the themes at face-to-face meetings. • The radio programmes would be broadcast at predetermined times known, and convenient, to facilitators and learners. • Learners would be featured prominently on the radio programmes. Siabi-Mensah (2000) conducted a review of the radio component of the literacy classes. Some of the issues identified included: • Electricity issues meant that some radio transmissions were dependent on unreliable and expensive generators. • Radio coverage was not achieved across all regions. • Not all literacy classes were provided with radio sets. • Radio stations were not effectively managed, lacked key resources for work, were overstaffed
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