Public Computing, Computer literacy and Educational outcome

Public Computing, Computer literacy and Educational outcome

The education for all movement took off in 1990 at the world conference on education for all. Since then, governments, non-governmental organisations, civil society, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies and the media have taken up the cause of providing basic education for all children, youth and adults.  Around 83 countries are on track to achieve education for all EFA by 2015. However, according to the 2002 report, 28 countries, accounting for over 26% of the world’s population, may not achieve any of the three measurable Dakar goals i.e. Universal primary education (UPE), gender equality and the halving illiteracy rates. Two-thirds of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, which includes India as well.

India has the highest number and greatest diversity of grassroots Information and Communications Technology Initiatives in the developing world. There are a huge number of ICT projects and community centres in rural India for development purposes. And over half of the world’s ICT kiosk initiatives are located in India (Sood, 2003). Not only that, but India is ahead of other developing regions when it comes to ICT initiatives in rural areas. One of the most pioneering works in this area is a research experiment on “Minimally Invasive Education (MIE)” or ‘Hole in the Wall Project” initiated by Dr. Sugata Mitra, Chief Scientist, CRCS, NIIT Ltd. (Mitra2000, 2003; Mitra and Rana, 2001).

The Hole in the Wall Project:  The first experiment was conducted in 1999, when one PC was embedded in a wall facing a slum in New Delhi to observe what children would do with it. Mitra (1999; 2000; 2001; 2003) hypothesised that “groups of children when provided appropriate resources will attain computer literacy with minimum intervention”.

The three year nationwide research program in India proved that groups of children can learn to operate computers with no adult intervention. Observations, anecdotes from community members indicated that a lot was happening as a result of the nature of the MIE learning stations. Teachers and principle commented that children were performing better in schools and they attributed it to the learning stations. An MIE learning station has been designed such that computers are accessible from outside through holes in the wall. The design covered 4 zones: south, north, east and west. The results from this research revealed that:

Performance on computer literacy:  children who had been exposed to MIE learning stations have gained computer literacy (as measured by IAI) over the nine months of the research as against children who have had no exposure to MIE learning stations. In other words, MIE learning stations had led to computer literacy.

Academic Performance:  it was observed that academic performance had increased significantly in two zones, north and south zone. The results were encouraging, as out of 17 sites, in 11 sites, children had benefitted academically from MIE learning stations. Everything else being constant between the two groups, the experimental group had gained from using the learning station. Interestingly, literature suggests that high intelligence may be expected to correlate significantly with educational achievement. The experimental group in the north and south zone had gained significantly in intellectual maturity and also in their academic performance.

Hiwel Math & English:   in the west zone, children had improved significantly in Hiwel math and English over the nine month period. While in the south zone, children gained significantly in Hiwel Math. One of the possible reasons could be the content that the children were exposed to. For example in West zone, in one of the sites, they had internet connectivity as well as offline content. Similarly in south zone (2 sites) children were provided with internet connectivity.

MIE learning stations had impacted children in more than one way. Despite the huge regional, linguistic, cultural variations among & across sites, there had been some common observations and findings. Most of the children had picked up computer literacy on their own, increased significantly in intellectual maturity, improved in school performance and in tests developed in-house.