Education technology is defined as the combined usage of computer hardware, software, and academic practice to facilitate a process of online learning. Over the past decade, the world has witnessed a capital-intensive focus towards mobilizing education technology initiatives across schools and beyond classrooms.
With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, the government of Bangladesh had aimed to bring a whopping 40 million students under its flagship Amar Ghore Amar School Campaign by tapping into its online platforms, the national radio station Bangladesh Betar, and community wireless stations -- yet the challenge of driving forward tangible investments in education technology have been met with key concerns with respect to digital illiteracy and inaccessibility.
The question therefore is this: How do we streamline accessible learning support towards students at a time where hybrid methods of education delivery are expected to become the norm?
Novel ideas and unique systems
In the mid 2000s, Bangladeshi- American educator Salman Khan introduced a consolidated platform that synthesized a set of online tools to help educate students. Broadly speaking, Khan Academy has a two- pronged system -- the provision of short lessons in the form of videos and supplementary practice materials for educators to use.
Importantly, Khan Academy created a unique system that unequivocally contributed in redefining both the goals and the institutional vision of education technology -- with the globalization of learning becoming an increasing focus for educators and policymakers.
Geographical immobility and the physical locations of students became secondary considerations when discussing mechanisms to increase access to education services. With over 48 million registered users across 190 countries, Khan Academy has become the symbolic manifestation of privately funded e-learning initiatives that continue to subsidize traditional schooling across the world. Thereby, recontextualizing the landscape of modern education and setting much of the basis for how remote learning has taken place during the ongoing pandemic.
What Bangladesh is doing
In 2018, a group of young Bangladeshi software engineers and entrepreneurs created the Edutech app. By tapping into innovative technology and following a similar mould to the kind of delivery mechanism used by Khan Academy and others, Edutech uses a resourceful software that allows students to do online classes in a safe and secure environment -- incorporating both instructors from schools and home tutors into the process.
By presenting high-quality learning modules and offering EMI local payments, international PayPal services, and automated assessments, Edutech represents the kind of dynamic access-based education platform which needs to see higher levels of traffic and traction by users.
The added feature which is of key interest is this -- the ability of teachers to sign up for the platform and be trained on the delivery of courses, enhances the scope for a more effective form of online learning.
In terms of the challenges of facilitating and driving platforms such as Edutech into the mainstream education system in Bangladesh, one needs to recognize the incapacities faced by educationalists. In particular, teachers are not trained appropriately in service delivery and this causes a disconnect between the transmission of e-learning to students and those providing lessons.
Developed by the a2i program of the ICT Division and the Cabinet Division of Bangladesh, The Teacher’s Portal is perhaps the first space
for educators in Bangladesh that focuses on capacity development and cross-functional training. 558,000 registered teachers created over 416,000 pieces of digital content for this platform -- ensuring a deep- seated focus of educators towards peer learning, via an inclusive infrastructural system that promotes knowledge sharing.
More specifically, there is a dire need to create further public and private platforms that will allow educators to be better prepared and trained to provide quality remote education services to students. Disseminating capital into such structures is therefore the primary challenge in activating education technology more equitably -- and a2i should be complimented for this initiative.
The digital divide
The disparity or digital divide is also visible across rural-urban demographics -- it goes without saying that children from low income families face barriers in enrolling for online classes. Take the Amar Ghore Amar School campaign -- only 14 million primary school students have managed to receive online education as of June 2021, compared to the initial aim of 40 million.
Furthermore, online classes have been introduced in 15,676 out of 20,499 secondary schools and 700 among 4,238 colleges -- this has been termed a massive learning loss by experts. A lack of access is a colossal challenge even amidst an environment where the nation is focusing its collective energy in building a Digital Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics performed an in-depth Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey in 2019 showing that only 37.6%
of households in the country have access to the internet -- a paltry 5.6% of these households have a computer.
Hence, to say that the country and its students are equipped to invest time and effort towards online learning is inaccurate -- a concrete policy framework which accounts for these barriers is needed in this regard.
The reason why Khan Academy and similar platforms have been successful is because of the reduction in the digital divide between rural- urban populations -- particularly in Western countries.
However, with the growth of local platforms in Bangladesh such as Edutech and The Teacher’s Portal, one hopes that a key state-wide focus to provide further budgetary allocations to education access and teachers training is considered by our policymakers, so that citizens can have a genuine opportunity to use education technology as a means to create a more educated future generation.
The need for a radical shift
While the ongoing pandemic led to demands for a radical shift in fiscal attention towards the education sector, the projected allocation for the education and technology sectors has collectively increased by only 0.6%
in proportion to the size of the Tk 6.04 trillion budget announced by the Finance Minister earlier this month.
Which brings me to my final point – the current regime is one which can be ascribed as being politically mature and has been running the show without much opposition since 2009. Perhaps having no opposition to your idea, vision, or policy programs creates room for complacency, and a subsequent unwillingness to listen to specialists in different sectors. Increasingly, the government’s budgetary intentions seem to represent the wills and wishes of a certain class of business elites -- therefore the budget looks bigger, bolder, and brighter for the entrepreneurial class, but surely not for others.
Constant demands for boosting state financing towards education and health have been ignored -- often at the cost of stimulating a market- driven approach towards economic development.
Meaning the rate of change of increases in national income is in no way being reflected on how policy-makers are construing fiscal allocations towards education and health -- this is the unfortunate reality.
At the end of the day, this philosophy needs to change, and without this transformation, enhancing access to education and literacy will be difficult to mobilize equitably.
Mir Aftabuddin Ahmed is a Toronto-based Banking Professional and a regular contributor for The Dhak Tribune. Aftab can be reached at [email protected].
