5th Dec 2007 Linda Johansson-Hedberg defended her licentiate dissertation at Stockholm University: “Exploring telecentres as development initiatives Evaluation of telecentre benefits, performance and sustainability, in Malaysia and Mozambique.”
The department of computer and systems sciences, http://www.dsv.su.se/en/ has developed a wide range of e-learning projects among them cooperation with Mozambique and Malaysia.
Professor Love Ekenberg, supervisor, has too a large extent contributed to this. The opponent was Afzal Sher, director of Spider http://www.spidercenter.org/ .
Linda started with an overview of the studies and main conclusions. Thereafter a discussion followed about her conclusions and the role and future of telecenters.
Topics discussed was:
1. Telecenters and its adaptation and relevance for the increasing mobile phone use in the third world.
2. The need for smart mass-education of how to use the ICT-tools, is there an innovative approach to be developed reaching both the need in 100 000 telecenters worldwide, statistics presented by Afzal, who also informed that the number of Internet user in New York exceeds the number of users in Africa, which puts access into perspective.
3. What is local and what is universal in terms of content and skills needed?
4. The physical layout of the telecentres in the study. In a world moving into web.2 and social technology, also the telecentres needs to be designed for social interaction among humans and not only individual interaction with computers as indicated by the photos Linda presented.
5. Meaningful content and the language issue. Access is not only wires and connection it is also about finding something understandable in local language. The need for development of local language content was highlighted by Linda. And also the potential in open content, open courseware and the Internet as vast repository of content ready to be exploited by people knowing how to search and validate information.
6. Maybe it is not primary about creating more content, but rather to create meaningful activities (in formal learning), such as the e-tivity approach suggested by Gilly Salmon e t al. This approach was presented convincingly at Online Educa by Dr Alejandro Armellini, University of Leicester, UK: CARPE DIEM: Seizing Each Day for E-Learning Design. Have a look a the Advanced Design for E-Learning (Adelie) website http://www.le.ac.uk/adelie/ . This group hosts a conference next year, 8 – 9 January 2008 in Leicester: Tuesday 8 Jan 2008: The Campus and BeyondWednesday, 9 Jan 2008: Research Into Practice, see http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/events/conference2008.html
Linda´s work with her own words:
Abstract
Telecentres are formal moves to enhance access to Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) where individual access is unavailable or unaffordable. Since the 1990s an emphasis on reaching people in Africa, Asia and Latin America through the spread of telecentres can be ascertained. Telecentre initiatives are commonly motivated to improve people’s lives in poor or marginalised areas, weighing on assumptions that they can be tools for development. Though development motives are frequently underpinning telecentre initiatives the research of how telecentres respond to development issues in reality is yet insufficient. Numerous telecentre initiatives are based on technology-focused agendas and questions of appropriateness are commonly underplayed. And as many telecentres struggle with viability this is consequently bringing a need to learn from shared experiences of telecentres in their local contexts, of what works and works not.
The aim with this thesis is to explore telecentres, as development initiatives, and to identify problems encountered in their local practice towards providing meaningful access to ICTs. For this purpose three case studies of telecentres in Malaysia and Mozambique have been performed, with objectives to evaluate telecentre performance and benefits, and to investigate sustainability indicators in three different telecentre models. Additionally development motives underpinning telecentres and Information Communication Technology for development (ICT4D) initiatives are reviewed.
The results indicated on problems with digital inclusion, poor local involvement, lack of meaningful and relevant services, and insufficient human resources and skills for operation. These scarcities are essential to improve upon if the full potential of the telecentres were to be realised, but also for the telecentres to become valuable and sustainable tools for the communities they aimed to serve. The findings also implied that the main benefits of the telecentres were increased access to ICTs, enhanced awareness of the utility and use of ICTs, and increased opportunities for communication, entertainment, information retrieval, learning and recreation.
To learn from telecentre practice is important in order to elucidate how telecentres can possibly address development concerns. The findings indicated that the benefits from the telecentres were foremost of the advance of individuals, which implicated on several development assumptions underpinning telecentre initiatives. Based on facts of users aspirations and of achieved benefits a less visionary agenda for these telecentres is proposed
