Quality Issues in ‘Education For All’ through Open Learning

As a working definition, we are going to consider Open Learning an organised educational activity based on the use of teaching materials in which constraints on study are minimised in terms of access, time and place, pace, method of study, or any combination of these.

Across the world, the open learning system is well established at the school and university levels. The mission statement of the open learning system is to take education to the doorsteps of the learner, enhance social equality and create flexibility for lifelong learning. The system, at the school level, utilises, to a great extent, information and communication technology through the use of smartphones, tablets, computers and radio/television broadcasts. Along with Internet and satellite-based communication technologies, it provides many structural flexibilities that seem to have an edge over the conventional formal system. The flexibility relates to the:

• Place of learning
• Time of learning
• Eligibility criteria
• Students’ choice in selecting combinations of subjects
• The scheme of examination

The Dakar Framework was a collective commitment to action. Governments should ensure that Education For All goals and targets are reached and sustained. This is a responsibility that will be met most effectively through broad-based partnerships within countries, supported by cooperation with regional and international agencies and institutions. To recap, the Dakar Framework for Action expresses the international community’s collective commitment to pursue a broad-based strategy to ensure that the basic learning needs of every child, youth, and adult are met within a generation and sustained after that. It reaffirms the vision that all children, young people and adults have the human right to benefit from an education that will meet their basic learning needs in the best and fullest sense of the term, an education that includes Learning to Know, to Do, to Live Together and to Be. It is an education geared to tapping each individual’s talents and potential and developing learners’ personalities so that they can improve their lives and transform their societies.

This paper does not deal with the curriculum and pedagogical issues relating to open basic education and various comparative parameters between formal and non-formal education systems. We shall merely reiterate that the formal school system in many countries has failed to accommodate many children because they either do not join schools or drop out without completing their schooling.

Given the diverse nature of out-of-school children, including:

• Children of remote/inaccessible habitations
• Children of migrant families
• Children engaged in household chores
• Children involved in wage labour
• Children with restrained access due to religious beliefs and practices
• Adolescent girls

a variety of innovative strategies and delivery methodologies need to be formulated to address each of their peculiar problems.

In generic terms, the delivery methodologies need to ensure that they provide for:

• Sufficient flexibility to keep specificity and context of situations of the learner in mind
• A diverse management structure
• Clarity in ground-based assessment of learner needs
• Close linkage between the community and the educational intervention
• Appropriate pedagogy based on learner-centric activities

The Learner Segments can broadly be classified as being of five types:

Type I: The teachers and facilitators who require training and skill enhancement in teaching-learning methods. This type of learner is not the subject of our discussion.

Type II: The existing school populace. This group needs a redefined education paradigm to perceive their educational experience as relevant, as one that provides them with the requisite life skills so that they are motivated to continue with it.

Suggested delivery method: Computers and a Networked Learning environment, making the education paradigm relevant, flexible, and in keeping with the information age.

Type III: The adult population that has not been through an education programme (formal or informal).

Suggested delivery method: Broadcasting. Community centres may be equipped with computers.

Type IV: Children interested in getting educated but who do not have access to schools (e.g., children in remote regions).

Suggested delivery method: Broadcasting for core areas may be used. These could also be conducted through online classroom sessions. However, for this learner segment, certain modules will need to be completed through a distance-learning programme with printed material to support them. For this component of the programme, contact sessions will need to be arranged to resolve the problems and difficulties faced by the learners.

Type V: School dropouts that have been through some part of an education programme and have dropped out mid-stream. Such a group needs to pick up lost threads and is bridged into the formal education programme or an alternative schooling system.

Suggested delivery method: It depends on the stream into which the dropout is being bridged. If it is in the formal education system, the delivery methodology for Type II will apply; for the non-formal stream, the delivery methodology for Type IV will apply.

Irrespective of the type of educational system or the delivery mode used, a single question assesses the ultimate quality measure – Is the learner learning? All other aspects form vital links in the process of accomplishing this objective. Given an intelligent and thorough (but not necessarily exhaustive) assessment of ground realities, a structure is usually planned and implemented (essentially a top-down strategising approach). However, the information flow for the needs assessment of learners must always remain bottom-up. This is essential for ensuring quality standards in the delivery of any programme.

It is, therefore, imperative to bring in the concept of structured instructional design so that the process of imparting education may be scientific, well analysed, logically sequenced and focused on the learner’s needs. Instructional Design refers to the systematic development of instructional specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction. It is the entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and developing a delivery system to meet those needs. It includes the development of instructional materials and activities and the tryout and evaluation of all instruction and learner activities. It encompasses the entire process of instructional programme development from start to finish. The process can be summarised into five general phases. These phases sometimes overlap and can be interrelated; however, they provide a dynamic, flexible guideline for developing efficient and practical instruction.

• Analyse
• Design
• Develop
• Implement
• Evaluate

Analyse: Define the problem, identify its source, and determine possible solutions. The outputs include the instructional goals and a list of tasks to be instructed.

Design: Outline how to reach the instructional goals and expand the instructional foundation. The elements include writing a target population description, conducting a learning analysis, writing objectives and test items, selecting a delivery system, and sequencing the instruction.

Develop: This involves generating the lesson plans and lesson materials—the instruction, all the media that will be used in the instruction, and any supporting documentation. This may include hardware (e.g., simulation equipment) and software (e.g., computer-based instruction).

Implement: This refers to the actual delivery of instruction, whether classroom-based, lab-based, or computer-based. The purpose of this phase is to efficiently and effectively deliver instruction. This phase must promote the learners’ understanding of the material, support the learners’ mastery of objectives, and ensure the learners’ transfer of knowledge from the instructional setting to the job.

Evaluate: This is an ongoing exercise. It may be formative or summative.

All phases in the chain need to be emphasised. There is often a tendency to get excessively preoccupied with only one or two phases, such as the instructional media and technologies used in the education system. Instructional design is an invaluable strategy and development guideline that affects the quality of educational programme delivery. The quality of the programme, of course, must be judged by the extent to which it fulfils learner needs and requirements.

The choice of instructional media and technologies also determines the programme’s quality. There is a wide range of such instructional media:

• Print: This medium has been used extensively in open and distance learning. It effectively supplements classroom teaching and is the most cost-effective medium for information takeaway in an open learning system.
• Broadcast: Both television and radio continue to be used in schools and communities worldwide. A series of radio instruction projects, in which students are active in the classroom and respond to the radio teacher, have been running in parts of the world. The projects have successfully increased student learning, although interactive radio demands heavy investment in curriculum development.
• Computers: Computers have been used in the classroom for a variety of reasons – to build up a workforce with skills in information technology; to educate all future citizens about technologies; to facilitate frequent curriculum change to promote change in education; to provide access to the Internet and email; it can be leveraged for cost-effectiveness and outreach.

Most systems combine and use the delivery mode that suits the context and serves the programme’s purpose.

Delivery modes for open learning systems must address the requirements of scalability, modularity, reliability and flexibility to focus on quality. Emphasis must be given to factors as under.

THE PROCESS OF LEARNING

The teaching and training processes are “interactive”. The students must interact with the teacher/trainer as an integral part of the process. The teaching and training involve “group-paced” teaching and “individual” study. The basic concept behind the delivery mode of the system must be its flexibility and competence to meet and adjust itself to the teaching and training process. Teaching is an asymmetric procedure. The Teacher/Trainer/Expert has a large quantity of information to deliver to the learner, while the learners have less information to provide back, randomly. There is also sometimes a need to access and receive additional information at varying intervals, which can be used at an individual’s own pace.

In addition to the flow of information between the teacher/trainer to the learners, the delivery mode needs to allow the learners to interact among themselves, to be able to exchange information and experience and to work as teams. The asymmetric communication is thus inherent in the teaching and training procedures. The Centre of Knowledge needs a “wide channel” to deliver much information to the learners. In contrast, in the other direction – from the learners to the Centre – many “narrow channels” for interaction and individual work are needed. The system should facilitate cost-effective video and data interaction between instructors and learners in various locations. The systems should be simple and modular, bringing economical and interactive learning within the reach of every learner segment.

INFORMATION SOURCES

In the new delivery modes available for learning, educational content will be derived from diverse sources, including digital libraries, web-based tools, and electronic content. The content will also be in alternate forms, including print, video, audio, CD-ROM, and Web-based packages.

COMMUNICATION NEEDS

The open learning “classroom” and learners will tend to be in multiple remote locations, whereas the source remains in a centralised location. Thus, the learners need to interact with the centralised location as well as, to a lesser extent, with each other. Incrementally, communication will occur continuously over the working week but at periodic intervals during the day.

ECONOMY AND SIMPLICITY

The delivery modes are designed for open learning and target the non-commercial segment of society. In addition, the potential users may have limited knowledge about the operations of such a system and its potential. In such a scenario, the cost-effectiveness and simplicity of the network gain more significance.

Emerging communication forces make a profound, lasting transformation of basic education feasible and necessary. Technologies, particularly the Internet, multimedia and digital networks, alter the methods and economics governing how people produce, disseminate, and use knowledge. These changes, in turn, affect the curriculum: what is taught, how students gain access to it, and what human achievements result. Reshaping the curriculum through digital communications has enormous potential for advancing intellectual excellence and democratic equity – thereby ensuring the quality of delivery.

Power of networks: In an ideal world, high-speed networks can deliver, to any person at any place at any time, digital curricular materials that integrate multiple forms of knowledge (i.e. audio, video, imagery, simulations and sophisticated tools of analysis and synthesis) in addition to traditional text. Networks provide both access to curricular materials and the means to enable learners and teachers at the classroom level to communicate with the world at large, thereby breaking out of their traditional isolation. In short, the world of culture becomes a significant part of each class; creative contribution to that culture by students and teachers themselves becomes a possibility in every educational encounter. High-speed networks can unite the library and the classroom and open the tools and the data of advanced research to curious inquiry by all, creating a rich, high-quality environment of educational resources that empowers teachers and students to take on new and liberating roles. However, given the realities of low penetration of connectivity and bandwidth limitations, infrastructure limitations will affect the quality of delivery.

The delivery methodologies must facilitate an enhancement of the learning process in several ways, including:

• Access to flexible materials: The distributed collection of materials, including texts, images, sound, video, simulations, and data, along with powerful tools for using them, has the potential to reduce constraints on cultural and intellectual participation.
• Interaction with mentors and experts at a distance: One-on-one adult mentoring is tremendously effective in helping young people cope with the complications of integrating all the disparate elements of human development. Delivery networks (not necessarily technology-based) can significantly lower the cost of money and time such mentoring entails.
• Synthesise knowledge through project-based problem solving: Advanced delivery media in education permit the integration of intellectual activity, as learners can use powerful tools and work with the contents of the local context as well as information access to pursue answers to the questions and issues that animate scholarship, science and professional practice.
• Engage in the civic concerns of public life: Through the project, learners should be able to engage with representatives of their communities to work on health, environmental, and social issues, develop habits of service and involvement, and form a sense that they face significant choices and command significant resources with which to put their choices into action. Information and effective delivery modes can engage learners in thinking and acting on real civic concerns.
• Widen access to education: Cost-effective educational applications of technology can introduce learning to remote and rural areas. Incrementally, technology can facilitate the introduction of effective cross-subsidy mechanisms to provide greater equity in access.
• New ways of learning: Through instructional media, learning can emerge from the traditional boundaries of the classroom. It facilitates the transmission of knowledge in new ways, such as remote teaching and open education. Learners thus have a wider menu of learning options, including home-study, network learning, and technology-aided self-learning.

To conclude, instructional design for open learning systems is now recognised as a new pedagogy for learning communities. By integrating technology and other delivery modes into the education process, new educational excellence and professional development models can be created to benefit alternate learner segments. However, the effectiveness of instructional technology is embedded in the efficacy of other education improvement efforts. Therefore, stakeholders must agree on the ends attempting to be achieved – common standards and practices must be defined to determine how the different delivery modes for open learning accomplish the ends.

Linking instructional technology with core instructional objectives makes sound, effective delivery methodologies. That’s the message we need to communicate. It’s a process, not a number. The policy goal should be first to understand the conditions of pro-social delivery methodologies and second to employ that understanding for learning improvement. Both require more penetrating analysis than has heretofore been the standard. An essential part of policy reform is to give policymakers a common language and data with which to speak to their constituents so that support for effective open-learning methodologies will be widespread throughout the community. Instructional technology works – but it only works for some children, in some topics and under some conditions. But that is true of all pedagogy, all systems for teaching or learning. Nothing works for every purpose, for every learner and all the time.

Shashank Vira (Managing Partner, Hearth Advisors)