Philippa Garson
Thanks to technological innovation, distance education is now the most viable way of extending the reach of education to the country’s forgotten corners – and people.
Ambitious initiatives like the Technology Enhanced Learning Initiative in Southern Africa (Telisa) and the SABC’s educational broadcasting venture may be the saving grace for a government thus far unable to deliver on its promise to redress historical imbalances in schools and extend higher education to the masses.
And if Telisa gets off the ground, the whole of Southern Africa stands to benefit. Spearheaded by Technikon SA and the Department of Education’s Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Education, Telisa aims to use new technologies to expand education access across the region.
The plan is to devise a co-ordinated, cost-effective scheme to exploit new technologies to the full, broadening the reach of distance education and creating a “regional community of scholars”.
First punted by the World Bank, the proposal will see the collaboration between Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries and various “centres of excellence” in each of them to expand the telecommunication infrastructure across the region, enabling large numbers of students and teachers to learn from programmes on the Internet, satellite television and other developing technologies.
The project aims to put a stop to the continental brain drain that sees learners leaving their countries in pursuit of quality education. Now scholars will be able to study towards top-quality degrees or diplomas without leaving their home towns.
So far, the SADC appears to be taking the proposal seriously, but political bureaucracy is standing in the way of rapid progress and the initiative will take some time to get under way.
“Once it is properly on the SADC agenda, we will need a body under the SADC, made up of representatives from all countries involved, to initiate projects to enhance learning and capacity building across the region,” says Technikon SA’s Paul West, director of the technikon’s Centre for Lifelong Learning.
The proposal is being refined and presented to prospective international donors for funding. West describes Telisa as a “strategic enabling vision, which hopes to link [several] initiatives to strengthen the Southern African region”.
The initiative will establish information “clearing houses”, probably beginning with South Africa and Zimbabwe and then in other countries on the continent as the network grows.
Pivotal to the plan is the involvement of community structures and the training of educators to support learners. Six leading projects have been identified as a starting point for the grand scheme.
Vis Naidoo, director of the Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Education, says technology is “one part of the total package in adopting an open-learning and lifelong learning approach. The spin-off for those learners using the technology is becoming more technologically literate. In a digital and information-based society, these are the important skills to pick up.”
One can wax lyrical about the possibilities for distance education with the Internet and satellite television, but a few important home truths temper the vision somewhat: “You can’t just plant the technology there. You need to build an environment to address recurring expenses, possible breakdowns in the technology.”
A more traditional – and therefore more reliable – technology making an impact on distance education is broadcasting. Eighteen months ago the education department and the SABC joined forces, with the former pumping R40-million into the creation of a significantly expanded educational broadcasting wing.
Now, the initiative is going from strength to strength and a schools’ service, which will beam programmes directly into the classroom, is set to begin later this year.
“We are more confident than ever that educational broadcasting can play a major role in developing a culture of learning and teaching,” says television section head Nicola Golombik, who believes the educational programmes “are giving people a vision of what education can be”.
In their endorsement of outcomes-based and lifelong learning, the programmes inject a critical, “relevant-to-life” slant to learning and teaching. “The responses we get to programmes like Take Five [an upbeat afternoon programme aimed at the youth] and Educator Express [a teacher-development programme] say to me there are millions of educators and learners out there who are hungry for education, who need support, affirmation and stimulation.”
While audience ratings are due soon, Golombik says preliminary research shows that many are opting for educational television instead of soapies or kicking balls around outside.
The interest generated in Take Five, by adults as well as youths, is partly why the programme is moving from SABC2 to SABC1, to the more favourable 4pm slot on weekdays.
Golombik is reluctant to define educational broadcasting as “distance education”, given that many of the programmes are used in a live, face-to-face teaching situation.
Programmes are also repackaged and sold to schools and educational centres in video form and the provision of these resource packages is a major function of the broadcasting initiative, she says. However, education is undoubtedly being made accessible to people on a large scale in informal learning environments and at minimal cost to the end-user.
Television’s older sister, radio, is also reaching out to the country’s dusty corners, broadcasting educational programmes in all the country’s official African languages.
While educational broadcasting (both radio and television) was given the first boost by the education department, funding will now come from the public broadcaster itself.
“What was agreed is that the relationship between ourselves and the education department, as well as other government departments like agriculture, welfare, labour and health, will continue, but it needs to reconstituted,” says Golombik.