The Impact of ICT on Education: A Study on Rural Schools

The Impact of ICT on Education: A Study on Rural Schools Arifur Rahman Khan *1, Reza Shahbaz Hadi 2, Dr. Md. Mahfuz Ashraf 3 1 Daffodil Institute of IT (DIIT), Bangladesh 2 Department of Business Administration, Daffodil International University, Bangladesh 3 Department of Management Information Systems, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh *1 wms.arif@gmail.com; 2 reza_sabbir@yahoo.com; 3 ashraf.mahfuz@gmail.com Abstract- Bangladesh is one of the rising countries in the world from economic and human development perspective. Information Communication Technology (ICT) plays a significant role in developing human capital through bringing a revolutionary change in education system specially focusing on the development of rural schools by the use of ICT in imparting education to the students of primary and secondary levels. The government of Bangladesh has taken some initiatives to integrate ICT in education system and one of these is to digitize the academic books both in primary and secondary levels and distribute these across the country so that the students in rural areas can download the books from the Internet at free of cost and thereby facilitate the education system. Government also provides training to the teachers and other authority of the rural school to encourage them to use ICT for both academic and administrative purposes. This paper attempts to identify the various impacts of ICT on education systems focusing on the rural schools in Bangladesh. Keywords- Bangladesh; Digital Divide; Discriminant Analysis; Information Communication Technology; Rural School I. INTRODUCTION Over the past few decades, the world has been shifting from industry-based to knowledge-based society. The ability of a nation to develop and implement knowledge capital determines its capacity to empower and enable its citizens by increasing human capabilities. Easy access to knowledge, creation and preservation of knowledge systems, dissemination of knowledge, and better knowledge services should be core concerns of a country. Getting access to basic education has been a fundamental human right of every citizen of a country. As part of its development aspirations, the government of Bangladesh established Vision-2021 and came up with the National ICT Policy-2009 and National Education Policy-2010 to act as catalyst in the country movement to become Digital Bangladesh by 2021 and thereby upgrade its position from developing to middle income country. In pursuit of Digital Bangladesh by 2021, it is important that Bangladesh invests in Information Communication Technology (ICT) to develop its human capital to ensure that a trained and skilled and well-educated manpower is created as human capital which is the key tool to boost the country s development. The main challenge for Bangladesh to gain a middle income country status lies in the ability to develop its human capital and intellectual capital to produce adequate supply of knowledgeable workers who are flexible, agile and mobile with relevant knowledge and skills required by the industry [12]. Bangladesh is initiating to step toward the vision of integrating ICT into its education system. Government of Bangladesh implemented a pilot project in secondary schools in Gazipur and Comilla in 2009 with the support of BRAC under TQI-SEP (Teaching Quality Improvement in Secondary Education Project). This initiative ensures primary ICT based knowledge and education for the students and enhances the teaching capacity of the teachers [10]. Approximately 106 textbooks of primary and secondary levels are converted to e-books, electronic version of textbooks and published by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) and uploaded on www.ebook.gov.bd with the technical assistance of Access to Information (A2I) of Prime Minister s Office (PMO) in 2011. Statistics on Bangladesh s expenditure on human development-related activities point out that national budget spending on this sector has been on the rise in the past several decades which is a positive indication towards the improvement of ICT integrated education, teachers training, free e-book distribution, years of schooling and student enrollment [12]. The objective of the study is to address the impact of various uses of ICT on education and the challenges in implementing the ICT integrated education. This paper is divided into four key parts. The first part of the paper provides a brief overview of the importance of education for national development. The second part then presents Bangladesh national development aspirations that resulted in creation of Digital Bangladesh and Vision 2021 that is shifting into middle income country by 2021. Part Three will discuss the different projects that have been taken by NCTB, one of the organs of Government of Bangladesh. Part Four will discuss about the Bangladesh s experience on ICT on education (some prospects and some problems). II. EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Most of the countries across the globe address the issues such as education, healthcare, economic, and technological development as these are driving forces for national development of a country. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) which directly contributes to the promotion of social and economic development recommends that a healthy, nourished and well - 367 -

educated population is the prerequisite to generalize the economic and social development. Education and the proper dispersal of knowledge play a significant role for the development of societies and economies because educated population are more productive and more respectful to the introduction of innovations and technologies [5]. In addition to that, educated people tend to lead healthier lives with better medical care and take on greater participation in civic activities [1]. It is observed that countries that have achieved high levels of economic growth in recent decades have done so in part because of the efforts they have made in developing and strengthening its human capital through their education systems [1]. As such, the effective creation, dissemination and accumulations of knowledge and human capital development through effective educations systems are key drivers in technological progress, innovations and economic growth [5]. The government of Bangladesh put emphasis on the importance on education since its independence and in consequence education policy was established after a short period of independence. It has been proved that government is sincere to the development of education as it allocates a substantial amount of the national budget for enhancing the standard of education for the past four decades. III. DIGITAL BANGLADESH: VISION-2021 In this age of globalization, Bangladesh needs to ensure the maximum use of ICT to encounter the challenge of 21 st century. The present government established a Vision 2021 whose ultimate target is to form a modern country or Digital Bangladesh through the effective use of ICT [4]. Digital Bangladesh does not imply the mere use of ICT; rather it implies the proper use of ICT to ensure education, health and poverty alleviation [3]. The government has expressed the Digital Bangladesh vision in no uncertain terms, started the process of leadership development to realize this vision and launched a number of initiatives which have demonstrated to policy makers and citizens alike the benefits of utilizing ICTs for service delivery. Moreover, the government has established the foundation for an enabling environment with an actionable ICT Policy 2009, Right to Information Act 2009 and ICT Act 2009. IV. BANGLADESH GOVERNMENT PROJECTS ON ICT ENABLED EDUCATION Education for All: The government of Bangladesh makes a strong commitment to implement the Education for All (EFA) projects through ensuring education to the underprivileged students both in rural and urban areas [9]. As pre-primary education bears an important impact on continuing the further learning, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs and Ministry of Religious Affairs are operating pre-primary classes in rural and remote areas under development projects. To support the government, more than 150 NGOs are also operating pre-primary education throughout the country [11]. Electronic versions of all primary and secondary books: Another ground breaking project of government is the conversion of paper based books into electronic version books from class 1 to class 10 including teacher s training and other necessary books and anyone can download these books at free of cost from the NCTB and www.ebook.gov.bd website [8]. ICT project for education in secondary and higher secondary level: The government provides laptops and multimedia projectors to 20,500 public and private educational institutions to improve the classroom teaching-learning process. The main objective of this project is to introduce ICT to the students, make class learning more attractive and bridge the digital divide between rural and urban students [8]. V. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A. Qualitative Perspective The nature of this research is investigative. Interpretative tradition using qualitative data suits best with this research. Qualitative analysis provides better-off descriptive data and enables a rich, in-depth exploration of complex phenomena in a way that quantitative data cannot. This approach is consistent with the construction of the social world characterized by interaction between the researcher and the participants. The researcher s interpretations play a key role in this kind of study bringing such subjectivity to the fore, backed with quality arguments rather than statistical exactness. 1) Study Area: Ten schools having Bengali syllabus including both the primary and secondary levels are selected which are located in Comilla, Chittagong, Jessor, Sylhet, Gazipur. Some information about the ten schools is as follows in Table I: 2) Respondents In this research purposive sampling is used to select respondents. All the respondents are involved in ICT use in rural schools including both male and female. For getting desired sample size and studying related information, respondents including primary and secondary level students and teachers and other administrative staffs are interviewed from the selected study sites. The socio-economic background of the respondents is shown in Table II. - 368 -

TABLE I CONTEXTUAL DATA ON TEN SCHOOLS Location School No. of Students No. of Teaching Staff Nawab Faizunnessa Government 5000 150 Comilla Girls High School Bibir Bazar High School 50 167 Chittagong Khawja Ajmeri High School 4800 145 Chittagong Government Muslim High School 4600 120 Jessore Nutan Khayertala Secondary School 5800 180 Seva Sangha Girl's High School 6000 190 Sylhet Jubilee High School 3800 128 Palash High School 3400 123 Gazipur Chandana High School 4780 167 Banshtali Govt. Primary School 4382 150 TABLE II SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND OF THE RESPONDENTS Gender Age Education Level Type of ICT Use Use of ICT Comilla Chittagong Jessore Sylhet Gazipur Total Male 4 3 3 4 3 Female 2 2 4 3 2 10-20 2 2 2 1 2 21-40 3 3 3 4 3 41-60 1 1 1 1 1 Primary 2 2 2 1 1 Secondary 2 2 2 1 2 Honors 1 1 1 1 1 Masters 2 2 2 1 1 Computer 3 3 2 1 1 Internet 2 2 2 2 2 Computer & Internet 3 1 2 1 3 Academic Purpose 4 4 4 4 4 Administrative Purpose 2 2 2 2 2 B. Quantitative Perspective This study is descriptive in nature carried out using primary quantitative data. Two groups have been identified based on whether ICT is used in the educational institution (ICT based institutions and non-ict based institutions). A total of 8 variables have been selected from the findings of qualitative analysis based on which the groups seemed to differ. Discriminant analysis has been conducted to identify the predictors that significantly discriminate between the groups. To conduct this analysis, 60 respondents have been selected based on stratified sampling technique. The parents of students of educational institutions were counted within the sampling frame. 5 parents from 6 ICT based institutions in which 3 located in rural areas and 3 in urban areas, and also 5 parents from 6 non-ict based institutions in which 3 located in rural areas and 3 in urban areas. Thus the study has considered the schools located in both urban and rural areas so that the findings from qualitative perspective can also be generalized from quantitative aspects in describing the impact of ICT on education. Statistical software SPSS 16 has been used to analyze the data. VI. FIELD RESULTS A. Qualitative Perspective Interview is taken to some selected respondents who are living in any of the five districts and involved in the use of ICT in academic and administrative purposes including teachers, students and other employees of the above referred ten schools. 1) Facilitate the Learning Process: ICT facilitates the students learning process by making the learning materials available to the students. Arafat Islam, Class V, We don t need to bring academic books in the class room because our teachers use power point slides for e-book and we can easily learn what is taught in the class room. Our teachers can also use internet in the class room it is necessary to use to find out any information for learning purpose. 2) Student Oriented Learning: ICT ensures the student oriented learning by providing the hands-on training in use of computer and Internet. Monjurul Alam, Class VII, We can learn the use of computer and internet practically in our lab class. Our teachers impart student oriented training so that we can capture the technique of use of ICT very easily. ICT paves the way of student - 369 -

oriented learning which will bring a future benefits in the society. 3) Variety of Teaching Materials: ICT based education encourages to use multimedia, software, interactive courseware along with printed books in imparting education to the students. Sabina Akhter, Class VIII, Our teachers display video on relevant topics which helps us to capture knowledge very easily. We are also getting familiar with the innovative learning materials. Use of multimedia and interactive course materials helps us to cope up with the change in this global world. 4) Minimize the Gap Between Urban and Rural School: ICT ensures the availability of computer and Internet to the students of rural school, which enables them to get most updated information and knowledge around the world and thereby minimize the gap between urban and rural school. Sayed Abdur Rauf, 28, School Teacher, We can use internet and computer in the class room to provide the better education to the students. We are trying to come out from the traditional teaching method by using interactive and multimedia courseware which indicates the gap between urban and rural school is decreasing. 5) Paradigm Shifting: Education blended with ICT is the key to instill paradigm shifting and also necessary to bring a socio-economic development. Md. Niajuddin shah,, School Teacher, To transform the nation from developing to middle income country, there is no alternative of ICT based education. So all the educational institutions irrespective of geographical area should use ICT in imparting education and thereby ensure the socio economic development in the country. 6) Facilitate the Administrative Activities Within the School: ICT helps to do administrative activities more efficiently than the traditional paper work system. Md. Iliash Ali, 25, Registrar, Earlier we used paper copy to keep records of the students information. But now we use computer to preserve all the important information which enables to share and update of information very efficiently and effectively. 7) Availability of E-Book: Government allows anyone to download e-book in primary and secondary level at free of cost from NCTB website. Poresh Goshami, Class VIII, My father is a farmer and I need to help him after returning from the school. He is not solvent enough to buy me books but I collected all the academic books for free. After going to the school lab, I download all necessary academic books from the NCTB website without spending money and continuing my study. 8) Preparing Children for Information Age: Nowadays, ICT enables people to get information about anything within a shortest possible time through Internet. Md. Ruhul Kabir, 32, School Teacher, The world is encountering changes radically where people can get any information in a few minutes. To cope up with these changes, a person needs to have enough skills on ICT. We use internet in the class room and let the student learn from the internet about any new thing which will help to prepare students for the information the information age. 9) Accelerating National Development: The use of ICT in education presents many benefits to the nation and the most remarkable one is to accelerate the national development. Md. Ajahar Islam, 38, School Teacher, We are trying to introduce the multiple use of ICT in education so that students can increase their skills to a greater extent bring significant changes in the country. It is observed that countries that have achieved high levels of economic growth in recent decades have done so in part because of the efforts they have made in developing and strengthening its human capital through their national education. Educated population is more productive and more receptive to the introduction of innovations and technologies which ultimately accelerate the national development of a country. 10) Using Multimedia for Interactive Education: Multimedia is used to prepare coursework and demonstrate video which make the learning process easier for students. Salma Binte Hasan, Class VIII, Earlier we brought book in the class room and our teachers covered some topics from that book and gave home work for the next class. But now our teacher display video on the relevant topics in the class room. It - 370 -

really makes our learning process easier. After watching video, we can keep the topics, what taught in the class room, for a longer period B. Quantitative Perspective From the table above, it is apparent that the two groups are widely separated in terms of expenditure than other variables. The deviation in case of Education Quality, Easy Lectures, and Teacher Performance is higher than that of Faster Procedure. Marks, Modernized System, and Educational Material are not that significantly separated. The standard deviations in case of Expenditure and Marks are higher than rest of the variables. TABLE III GROUP MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATION OF THE VARIABLES Group Mean ICT Education Easy Teacher Modernized Faster Educational Expenditure marks based quality lectures performance system procedure material Yes 850.00 76.50 3.80 3.83 3.37 2.73 3.50 3.47 No 549.33 75.63 2.53 2.50 2.40 2.37 2.87 3.10 Avg. 699.67 76.07 3.17 3.17 2.88 2.55 3.18 3.28 Group Standard Deviation Yes 201.289 3.319.961.874 1.129 1.285.900 1.167 No 134.522 7.313.900 1.042.968 1.299 1.137 1.155 Avg. 227.581 5.647 1.122 1.167 1.151 1.294 1.066 1.166 TABLE IV TEST OF SIGNIFICANCE BASED ON WILK S LAMBDA AND F-RATIO Wilks' Lambda F Sig. Monthly expenditure.556 46.270.000 Percentage marks.994.349.557 Satisfaction with education quality.676 27.769.000 Ease of understanding lectures.668 28.820.000 Satisfaction with Teacher performance.821 12.670.001 Modernized education system.980 1.208.276 Faster administrative procedure.910 5.724.020 Available educational material.975 1.496.226 While finding the discriminating factors among the groups, predictors have to be somewhat distinct and uncorrelated. To check the multicollinearity problem, the pooled within-groups correlation matrix has been developed. It is found that there is very low correlation between the predictors. Thus, multicollinearity is unlikely to be a problem. The significance of the univariate F ratios indicates that when predictors are considered individually, Expenditure, Education Quality, Easy Lecture, Teacher Performance, and Faster Procedure significantly differentiate between students of ICT based and non-ict based institutions. TABLE V ASSOCIATED EIGENVALUE OF THE FACTORS Function Eigenvalue % of Variance Cumulative % Canonical Correlation 1 1.104 a 100.0 100.0.824 As there are two groups, only one discriminant function is possible. The eigenvalue associated with this function is 1.104 and it accounts for 100% of the explained variance. The canonical correlation associated with this function is 0.824. Thus, 67% of the variance in the dependent variable can be accounted for by this model. TABLE VI ASSOCIATED CHI-SQUARE AND WILK S LAMBDA Test of Function(s) Wilks' Lambda Chi-square df Sig. 1.475 40.176 8.000 The value of Wilks-Lambda is 0.475, when transformed to a chi-square of 40.176 with 8 degrees of freedom, is significant beyond the 0.05 level. TABLE VII FUNCTIONS AT GROUP CENTROIDS Function ICT based institution 1 Yes 1.033 No -1.033 Unstandardized canonical discriminant functions evaluated at group means Group 1 has a positive value (1.033), whereas Group 2 has an equal negative value. The signs of the coefficients associated - 371 -

with all the predictors are positive. This suggests that ICT based institutions incur high monthly expenditure, ensure higher education quality, facilitate greater ease of understanding lectures, ascertain satisfactory performance by teachers, and accelerate the speed of administrative procedure. VII. CHALLENGES IN ICT BASED EDUCATION IPLEMENTATION A. Lacking Holistic Approach To implement any national project, several ministries get involved in implementation process so top level executives in the government body should be more careful about the coordination, which is missing in several ICT enabled education projects. Sometimes it happens that budget allocation for a project implementation is very low relative to the demand which causes the lengthier of the project. B. Lacking ICT Infrastructure In many rural schools students are not getting proper ICT based education because of lack of ICT infrastructure. Internet connection is not available in the remote areas and the number of computers distributed by the government is very low so government should ensure adequate computers and the Internet connectivity across the country especially in the rural school to facilitate the ICT based education of rural school students. C. Teachers Training Problem Another issue identified is the lack of training for new teachers in rural schools [2]. Teachers who are newly transferred to these schools are not given specific teaching training and have difficulties fitting into their new roles as teachers in a student oriented system which requires teachers to reposition themselves from instructors to facilitators in the learning process of their students. Therefore, there is a pressing for Ministry of Education to look into the ICT competency of teacher in rural schools to ensure that all teachers attain a prescribed minimum ICT competency level which encompassed the areas of knowledge of key ICT applications, Internet literacy, Web technology and Digital media. VIII. IN-DEPTH DISCUSSION ICTs are potentially a useful tool both for managing education and teaching. Application of ICT in managing educational institutions should be encouraged and should be used by instructors to gain access to educational materials. By teaching computer skills to youngsters, they may influence inward investment for the future society as well. ICTs are most likely to be cost effective when used to reach very large number of students; when used for research; and when used by administrators irrespective of time and place [6]. In a technology-based environment, students are prepared to learn in conductive learning surroundings with the resources available to them anytime and anywhere on their own. Such an environment will produce motivated learners who are eager to know more in order to encounter current challenges of the globalization era in their lifelong learning. To encourage the teachers to use ICT, there must be strong support of both the instructional and administrative aspects of ICT in the school so that teachers will be able to embrace ICT fully in teaching in their classroom [7]. The ICT has become an inseparable part of the society for communication between people, searching for entertainment and education, virtual meeting place, shopping and so on. Thus education plays a very important role to provide the platform and strong foundation to people. Conditions for successful implementation of ICT integration in schools are essential requirement and must be met to achieve Vision 2021 of becoming middle income country. IX. SUMMARY, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH In pursuit of Digital Bangladesh by 2021, it is important that the country invests in ICT based education to develop its human capital to ensure that a trained and skilled and well-educated manpower is created. From a resource perspective, human capital can be effectively leveraged as a source of competitive advantage to boost the country s productivity, economic performance and sustain its competitiveness [12]. Based on the initial development of the ICT based education initiative and the experience gained, it must be noted that a range of issues ranging from educational change management, ICT infrastructure deployment and maintenance, connectivity, educational courseware development and teachers training warrant the attention of government of Bangladesh. From the survey it appears that most of the students of rural schools are very appreciative in adopting computer and Internet for education purpose which truly facilitate their learning process and make them enable to catch up with the global world. A major limitation of this study is the small sample size and all respondents were from twentytwo schools of Comilla, Chittagong, Jessor, Sylhet, Dhaka and Gazipur. It would be important to expand the research to incorporate representatives from all sectors of the Bangladesh society who are likely to attain self dependency with the help of ICT. Another limitation is the lack of relevant data, as the impact of ICT use in education is not very old and not much research has been done in this field. This field of impact of ICT use in education in Bangladesh is a recent topic, so there are many areas within this field for further research. It would be useful to expand the research to include larger sample size and within wider areas to incorporate a better view of the sector. Government policies and programs related to promote ICT - 372 -

Bangladesh are other research areas that would contribute to knowledge in this critical area. The insights reported in this paper could provide useful input from a user perspective to do further quantitative research in the area using the reported indicators. ACKNOWLEDGMENT First of all, we would like to thank Almighty, who gives us the ability and strength to complete this research paper. Then, we would like to convey our gratitude to the authority of Communications in Information Science and Management Engineering (CISME) to evaluate our talent by accepting our research paper. Finally, we would like to thank all the stakeholders of rural schools including students, teachers, parents who provide their valuable information through which we have been able to prepare this research paper. REFERENCES [1] Asian Development Bank, Educational and National Development in Asia: Trends, Issues, Policies, and Strategies, Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank, 2001. [2] Bismillah Khatoon bt Abdul Kader, Malaysia s Experience in Training Teachers to Use ICT. In E. Meleisea (Ed.), ICT in Teacher Education: Case Studies from the Asia-Pacific Region, Bangkok: UNESCO, pp 10-22, 2008. [3] The Board of Investment website. Avalilable: http://boi.gov.bd/about-bangladesh/government-and-policies/digital-bangladesh-overview, 2012. [4] The Board of Investment website. Avalilable: http://boi.gov.bd/about-bangladesh/government-and-policies/government-vision-2021, 2012. [5] H. El-Halawany and E. I. Huwail, Malaysian Smart Schools: A Fruitful Case Study for Analysis to Synopsize Lessons Applicable to the Egyptian Context, International Journal of Education and Development using ICT, vol. 4, iss.2, 2008. [6] M. Flecknoe, The use of virtual classrooms for school improvement, in BELMAS Annual Conference, 2001. [7] K. Fukasaku, M. Kawai, M. G. Plummer, and A. Trzeciak-Duval, Policy Coherence Towards East Asia, Tokyo, Japan: OECD. 2005. [8] The Ministry of Education website. Available: http://www.moedu.gov.bd/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=161&dir=desc&order=name&itemid=99999999&li mit=10&limitstart=0, 2009. [9] NCTB. Available: http://www.nctb.gov.bd/article.php?cat=9&subcat=26, 2009. [10] The Daily Samakal website. [Online]. Available: http://www.esamakal.net/, 2010. [11] UNICEF website. [Online]. Available: http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/operational_framework_for_preprimary_education_english.pdf, 2008. [12] Ya akob, A., Mohd Nor, N. F., and Azman, H., Implementation of the Malaysian Smart School: an investigation of teacher-learning practices and teacher-student readiness, Internet Journal of e-language Learning and Teaching, vol. 2, iss. 2, 2005. - 373 -