I have a strong personal believe in social equality and
closing the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Education has been widely
viewed as providing the knowledge base necessary to enter higher education that
will lead to higher paying occupations (Khan and
Williams, 2006). International organisations
such as Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has
conducted studies into the educational performance of developed versus
developing nations, and how higher education has a positive impact on the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) of a country and on the levels of wages for individuals (OECD,
2005, OECD, 2007).
Having worked for CSIRO Education I was exposed to the difference in the quality of education between those from
high socio-economic status (SES) areas and those from low-SES areas. Scientific
literacy of the students between the two SES areas was also vastly different.
When I watched the following two TED talks I realised
that it is possible to alleviate poverty through e-Learning and Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOC). The ability for those from developing countries to learn
a wide variety of courses from high standard universities such as Stanford
University can be very appealing.
Recently there has been an initiative in China to promote
e-learning to its citizens, as they realise that “e-learning can offer people
new sources of information, improve the range and quality of education
available to them, and enable all people, regardless of their physical
location, to take best advantage of their learning time” (Spencer-Oatey, 2007). The Chinese Government
realised that e-learning can “easily be transmitted to poverty-stricken areas
to help spread high-quality education. Thus the “Education aiding poverty
project” was established by Tsinghua University to eliminate poverty and spread
knowledge.
As the famous saying goes “Give a man a fish, you feed
him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”. Education and
knowledge can empower a person, it will help “them to become more proactive and
gain control over their lives” (Khan and
Williams, 2006). Education can help close the
knowledge gap and promote SES equality and gender equality, which are all keys
to eliminating poverty.
How else can MOOC help alleviate poverty? E-learning
allows students to study at Universities such as Stanford whilst located in
countries like India and Africa. As “e-learning is typically web-based and not
location- bound. In an online environment, students are not required to
physically attend university; the university comes to them” (Khan and
Williams, 2006). This way, the student can
save on time and travel costs, therefore reducing the cost of a traditional
‘brick-and-mortar’ education. On the other side of the coin though is the fact
that MOOC requires dedication and good time management skills for students to
remain motivated to complete the course. So the question remains as to whether
those from a lower-SES will have the time required to complete the courses,
with MOOC currently experiencing a relatively high drop out rate.
Self-instructed learning tested by Mitra and colleagues
in the “Hole in the Wall” experiment have shown that given the tools, children
and adults can use modern technologies and teach themselves. Children in rural
India were given a computer connected to high speed internet (plugged into a
wall), and children ended up teaching themselves through Minimally Invasive
Education (Mitra, 2003, Mitra and Dangwal,
2010, Dangwal and Gupta, 2012, Dangwal and Sharma, 2013).
Mitra and his colleagues also conducted similar experiments in rural UK and
low-SES locations in UK, where teachers prefer not to teach at. The ability of modern
technologies in these areas allowed students to be able to direct their own
learning, therefore maybe just promoting an inquisitive mind in the children is
enough to help raise their educational levels.
With modern technology, higher education is no longer
just for the privileged. Personally I look forward to the day when everyone
will have an equal opportunity to learn.
References
Edition: Trend in Education
Participation and Outputs. OECD
Education. OECD.
