Week 2: Lowering the costs of IT in education! Discussion started!
Thu, 07/16/2009 - 09:11
#32
Thanks for this important post Vincent. I'd agree that it is very difficult in a capitalist world to achieve anything approaching excellence in teaching and research without significant private sector financial support for new buildings, infrastructure upgrades, expensive research equipment, professorships and research posts in cutting edge areas and research contracts. And of course when major companies see the need for high level human capacity and start sponsoring large groups of students to take university courses lots of things become possible.
Trouble is that universities have to show a spark of initiative and capacity beyond their initial levels of funding in order to attract major private sector resources. It may also be a bit more difficult in a small African country where the major commercial players are often multinationals based in other countries and continents.
Thu, 07/16/2009 - 15:55
#33
Hi everybody!
this is a message from Simon Madugu Yalams - as a reply to Vincent post.
Simon's profile
http://science-connect.net/?q=user/256
.Hello Forum Members, Joining on this very issue, I absolutely share the views of Vincent that without deliberate attempt to involve the business sector in such a way that they will see the need, get involved and increase their support to research and development in our Universities, the success mark may come by, but perhaps not as soon as desired. My believe is that, until the African Universities stop conducting research only for examinations and certificate purposes and start focussing on development, we may just be rubbing the issues on the surface. Just like other contributors to this discussion, I welcome donation of technologies and IT supports in all forms from the willing and concerned developed economies of the world, but all that we may get may not be forever, and perhaps not absolutely “for free with time”. If they come freely or subsidized now, they may not in future. As such my concern is that, looking inward from “right from real inward as well as outward”, that is, becoming serious and committed to the course of our development is what will bring us out of this mess. If we do not want to perpetually remain dependent on used and obsolete or totally rejected IT systems and supports which are often dumped on us, African universities in particular will have to sit up. Considering Universities in other nations such as China and India in particular, should be enough stimulants for Africa to be motivated, challenged and swing into serious problem-solving researches, identification of strategies critical to her needs and devising actions relevant to it. It is unfortunate that, even where the Universities are ready to take up these challenges, bad governance is not helping matters either. In line with the posers raised by Tony Bates, Iam inclined to ask thus: Is it possible for Africa to take up the challenges faced in the provision and development of sustainable IT system required for the Continent and relentlessly work towards it, until the goals are achieved? Can we as African academics and lovers of the development of African University2.0 start appreciating the enormous human and material resources God has given the Continent and then, begin or continue to develop more positive attitude towards harnessing it to the fullest? I believe we can. I also know that it is possible, but the mindset must be reworked out first. Why do we experience exorbitant cost of IT? Some one may as well say, “Effects of global economic depression”. Yes, but even before then, the problem has been very much around. You may differ with me but some will certainly agree with me that, the African philosophy towards Technological Literacy generally and that of ICT in particular may need to be changed or re-oriented. If that is done, much efforts and supports will now be geared towards Research for Development in ICT in the African Universities; this will be then open more doors for increased involvement of the business partners, the industries and the other establishments, thereby decreasing the cost of IT currently being experienced. Additionally, if our leaders who frequently visit developed nations and enjoy all the Technological products could become touched, motivated or challenged and take up this matter serious, measures would be devised on drastically reducing the cost of IT in Africa. In the same trend, if within the Universities, brains will refuse to sleep conducting sound research for real solutions to our IT and other problems in Africa, the situation will change. On the use of mobile phones for learning, yes, we may fall back to M-Learning, but we need to remember that, even with that, one may still need money to put credit into the mobile phone to be able to upload or download materials. The issue of stable power supply necessary for running the internet servers, the computers or laptops (where available) and even for re-charging the mobile phones are still big problems in many of our (African) countries today. How do we conduct the e-conferences, e-banking, e-chatting, uploading and downloading, emailing, e- or distance learning activities? The long and short of my view is that, steps towards reducing the high cost of IT in Africa will have to start from Africa by the Africans (Leaders in particular). If we want to do it, it can be done. I will come back to it later if time permits. Thank you.
Fri, 07/17/2009 - 12:21
#34
Hi everyone, I am glad to be back again to review your and I thank you all for providing such detailed insights into your experiences with ICT and I must say that they have all been very informative.
I agree with Nnenna on some points like that ICT in many institutions is viewed as a luxury and not a core component in terms of learning. Secondly, that it is not really feasible to tackle this problem from a continental level since each African country is unique.
POLICY
However, in response to the questions raised thus far, I would like to present the case of Kenya by noting that.
a) Computers are zero rated, thus the cost of a computer in Kenya should not differ significantly from the rest of the world. Of course this raises the issue of purchase power but considering the tendency of most governments to as Tony B noted have any budding sector under their tax sights this is commendable.
b) Most public universities are considered to be extensions of government and therefore they get broadband at cost especially under the new marine optic cable deals where government has a stake (this should roll out in a few months and we are all eagerly in anticipation).
c) As part of its human resource development strategy under the national ICT policy available here http://www.cck.go.ke/UserFiles/File/national_ict_policy.pdf various concrete steps aimed at promoting ICT in education by among other things lowering costs are documented.
NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
The case of mobile phones that I mentioned last week can serve as a model of how Higher Education can benefit from ICT since M-learning is a part of ICT use in higher education and it has become even more affordable now that the initial set up costs have been recouped by most service providers. I am sure the same will happen with ICT infrastructure and especially internet connection set-ups like fiber optics, and wimax networks. Value addition solutions such as cable TV channels that also offer internet would be another way since the consumer gets more value for money in one contract.
UNIVERSITY LEVEL
As noted earlier, it is not possible to separate the universities from the rest of society and therefore in African countries, in addition to the policy changes mentioned above, the liberalization of the telecommunications sector, improvement of legislation, functional judiciaries and overall visionary leadership will change not only the cost of ICT but also the face of higher education on the continent.
Vincent actually took the words out of my mouth when he mentioned the need for partnership formation between universities and private enterprise. In most African countries, this should be easy since there are few universities that actually produce the key decision makers in the private sector. The lack of partnership between universities and private sector is manifested in the fact that most programs have been criticized as being archaic and irrelevant to the market, this disconnect makes private sector players and universities antagonistic as opposed to complementarily linked aspects of society.
The question of how to reduce the costs of ICT to me needs to take a longer term approach, for instance from my own experience, when I was in University, we were required to pay for facilities that would hopefully be available to students in future as part of the greater cost sharing for infrastructure development program. However, the problem with this approach was that in my view, the university should have secured funding from either government, multilateral and/bilateral associations or even the private sector, installed the facilities and then spread out the payments over a long period of time for students to actually gain value for their money. I believe that cost sharing is a strong ingredient of the magic portion that will significantly reduce the cost of ICT for those in higher education. The universities need to invest more in computer laboratories where students can access resources 24 hours a day. The few initiatives I have experienced have not worked since universities seek donor assistance to procure the equipment but do not provide, from their own resources adequate funds to sustain the equipment or hire competent staff. In addition failure to plan adequately makes it difficult for universities to upgrade the equipment as it becomes obsolete.
I agree with Nnenna on the free and open software component. One problem I foresee with its implementation is the challenge of value addition on our part, free and open need institutions to build and retain the human resources that will maintain and improve the platforms. Retaining people often means paying them market rates and most universities face a major challenge in this arena going by the number of strikes in our institutions of higher learning by no less than the academic staff. I think that for ICT costs for universities to be lower, then they need to make them economically viable for instance by reselling some of the extra bandwidth or collaborating with the private sector and through their resources conducting research and providing services that can generate the revenue to subsidize the infrastructure and operating costs.
Kindest Regards,
Sam
Fri, 07/17/2009 - 16:48
#35
Hi everyone,
I hope that you are all doing well and gearing up for the weekend. I was unable to participate effectively in the chat today due to technical problems that will hopefully be addressed by next week. During the afternoon, I got a chance to reflect more on the issue of ICT in education and I am not sure whether any one has addressed this earlier but what about certain innovative products that have been developed to aid access to ICT, a case in point is the $10 computer that was show cased in Dakar by NComputing since many people can use one CPU and thus reduce their capital outlay, energy, maintenance and even proprietary software licencing costs. Other companies like Gatlin provide packaged curriculums for short courses that become affordable since the cost is spread out over many users. They also provide a platform for academicians and content developers to sell their courses to other learners across the globe. This can be another way of reducing costs in ICT.
Sam
I hope that you are all doing well and gearing up for the weekend. I was unable to participate effectively in the chat today due to technical problems that will hopefully be addressed by next week. During the afternoon, I got a chance to reflect more on the issue of ICT in education and I am not sure whether any one has addressed this earlier but what about certain innovative products that have been developed to aid access to ICT, a case in point is the $10 computer that was show cased in Dakar by NComputing since many people can use one CPU and thus reduce their capital outlay, energy, maintenance and even proprietary software licencing costs. Other companies like Gatlin provide packaged curriculums for short courses that become affordable since the cost is spread out over many users. They also provide a platform for academicians and content developers to sell their courses to other learners across the globe. This can be another way of reducing costs in ICT.
Sam
Mon, 07/20/2009 - 15:13
#36
This is a great discussion going on here. The challenges facing ICT for education in Africa is more than cost or open source. Lack of passion and courage are major issues. Tony Bates tried to tell us that Africans future is in Africans’ hands, and this is very true. We need a system that will strengthen local innovations and this does not require too much. It is not costly. It only needs the right mindset of a few.
We need to facilitate systems that will encourage local technologies, massive or little. Free and Open Source software is a great idea but several African developers need shelter and water, they need power and livelihood - developing free and open source software in Africa is a huge challenge. I am proud that I belong to the FOSS community. PHP Freedom Framework (http://www.phpfreedom.org) is a web application development framework that I developed and released as a FOSS project. My plan is to build a tool that people can learn from and to teach African developer the ideas behind great application systems and principally, to show fellow African developer that we can be providers of technologies and not just a consumer. It can be downloaded directly from http://code.google.com/p/phpfreedom/downloads/list.
We need to start thinking this way, and we need to encourage ourselves. What I will like to see is a new system that will encourage small ideas in order to turn them to big innovations.
Sat, 07/18/2009 - 12:46
#37
Dear All,
The efforts so far advanced to reduce costs of ICT as excellently summarized by Tony C may not bear fruit when not done under the framework of a comprehensive technology plan. It is not surprising therefore that no one seems to know where we are, going or came from. More often than not the acquisition of ICT infrastructure is at best haphazard. This is because, in Africa, ICT comes either as donation or convenient add-ons to appear trendy.
This results into unimaginable waste, for example, at Makerere University one finds lots of digital whiteboards that are not being used or just used as “blackboards”….the same can be said of many other expensive equipment.
So it is a fact that considerable technology resources are already with us here in Africa. Many institutions for instance, boast of hundreds of PCs at each of the faculties. This has however led to extremely high energy costs by way of cooling systems. The layout of buildings, which has a big effect on the efficiency of these systems is not taken into account, hence cost effective options such as “fresh air” cooling are not possible. Even more insidious, according to a recent survey, over 20% of students and staff don’t turn off their equipment at night or weekend further aggravating the situation.
On the other hand, centralized power management software which can automatically switch off all equipment in an office between certain hours can be helpful.
Technologies such as virtualization and thin client have limited application across the board because of the extensive variability in the equipment, this being dictated by the way they were acquired.
The use of multi functional devices such as printers, now often include scanning, copying and fax functions, which is more efficient than running several separate devices. The number of printers per person can also be reduced, and printers can be set to enforce double-sided printing to save paper and use of the printer.
Wed, 07/22/2009 - 08:14
#38
Some great suggestions here from Vincent about more efficient (and cheaper) ways to use available technology.
And if we can't reduce the cost of technology? Perhaps we really have two aims here:
1) Freeing up underused and misapplied resources for appropriate and productive investment/ reallocation. (This means that we can often do more with the same amount of money.)
2) Using technologies productively and cost-effectively within broader strategies to enhance teaching, learning and research. (No point in having cheap IT if its used badly or used inappropriately to the priorities of universities.)
What do you think?
Wed, 07/22/2009 - 10:41
#39
Vincent these are very good ideas you bring up. You also raise very practical points.
It is imperative to have a comprehensive technological plan. It is also imperative to have that plan totally over arching within an institutution. The decentralization in acquisition of equipment in an institution is a given. It is important therefore for the different departments in the multi-plicity of funding to be guided by the plan.
A simple "solution" at my institute with regards some of the issues raised here include
1. Approval of all ICT equipment purchases (this includes donations of both new and used equipment) in the institution by the ICT department
2. Involvement of ICT engineers in approving building plans, this has been mainly to ensure connectivity to the network, but now you bring in the interesting aspect of the nature of the buildings themselves
3. Approval of all backup power solutions by the department of works and estates.
4. Enforcing, denial of purchase, of a network printer policy where persons are encouraged to share printers at all costs.
I see a very interesting communal-input (we could all do together) excercise here on what could go into a university technology plan building from what Vincent has already started on.
It is imperative to have a comprehensive technological plan. It is also imperative to have that plan totally over arching within an institutution. The decentralization in acquisition of equipment in an institution is a given. It is important therefore for the different departments in the multi-plicity of funding to be guided by the plan.
A simple "solution" at my institute with regards some of the issues raised here include
1. Approval of all ICT equipment purchases (this includes donations of both new and used equipment) in the institution by the ICT department
2. Involvement of ICT engineers in approving building plans, this has been mainly to ensure connectivity to the network, but now you bring in the interesting aspect of the nature of the buildings themselves
3. Approval of all backup power solutions by the department of works and estates.
4. Enforcing, denial of purchase, of a network printer policy where persons are encouraged to share printers at all costs.
I see a very interesting communal-input (we could all do together) excercise here on what could go into a university technology plan building from what Vincent has already started on.
Dear Participants,
I must accept that I find it extremely hard to envisage a reduction of ICT costs without the cooperation and support of the business sector. One approach could be through their social responsibility programs or direct support to research. Presently there appears to be minimal contact between higher education institutions and business, probably because the latter does not yet perceive the former as relevant. To me this falls squarely on the universities to prove their worth...until research at our universities is geared at solving community problems and consequently made accessible the ugly status quo may reverberate for some time to come.
I am yet to see research done at any of our Universities initiated by business or industry so as to improve their competitiveness. The majority of research done is merely for passing exams!! And many times, the way the research is done menacingly borders on impropriety.
All that said though, I don’t consider cost of ICT being the main hiccup in attaining University 2.0 in Africa but rather the lack of a research culture that need to be instilled right from the lower levels of the education continuum if it is to catch on.
This situation is exacerbated by governments that don’t make use of evidence based policy formulation. That is why it is possible to witness one policy removing taxation on computers but not on its accessories! Of course not to mention that such governments don’t see any value in research or those who carry it out.
Hence the magic over this quagmire, is collaboration, first among the local institutions and then with the external ones with a view of sharing experiences and best practices. The digital divide puts those with digital capability much farther ahead and isolates those who do not have it. Crossing the digital divide can end the isolation of local research communities. It is widely accepted that scientific and social research requires networks and is based on sharing of research results, inclusion is good and isolation is bad.