14 May 2014

By Diana Laurillard, London Knowledge Lab

MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – have been grabbing headlines and conference time for a year or two now. It’s the very large numbers that attract attention. But are MOOCs solving any real, global education problems? They are certainly not solving the problem of providing the 100,000,000 university places now needed by young people in emerging economies desperate for HE. This will double by 2025. They are not the people taking MOOCs.
They are not solving the problem that in the US student loan debt is now higher than credit card debt; nor the problem that in the UK 40% of student loans will not be repaid. University fees remain high while graduate pay is still low.
Massive sums have been invested in these courses by universities and venture capitalists, but right now the main beneficiaries are those who need it least. The most popular MOOCs are in computer science, finance and psychology. They do attract large numbers – sometimes hundreds of thousands to one course. But the people most likely to stay the course and gain a free qualification are well-educated men in their 30s working in professional jobs. Research by MOOC provider Coursera shows that 85% of MOOC participants already have university degrees.
So the problem MOOCs succeed in solving is: to provide free university teaching for highly qualified professionals.
Consider another problem: achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015. UNESCO data show (PDF) that by 2015 there will still be 53m children out of school.
When attempting to address our most ambitious educational goals, it should be a professional habit always to ask “how can technology help?” – especially when they are large-scale.
How do we reach these children? The answer is that we don’t, not directly. We focus first on developing the teachers. UNESCO estimates that we need 1,600,000 teachers to achieve universal primary education by 2015 (PDF page 223). Suppose we could use MOOC-style courses to provide teacher development for 10,000 teacher educators in the cities of developing countries? And each of those could use the same MOOC materials to train 10 teachers in the local towns? And each of those could train 16 local teachers in their villages? And they in turn could reach the children who would not otherwise have had any primary schooling…?
Here at the IOE, we are making a start. Supported by the UNESCO Institute for IT in Education we are pioneering a MOOC on ICT in Primary Education. It’s due to begin on 27 May, and we have already enrolled over 4000 teachers, school leaders, policy-makers and other educationists from more than 50 countries. It will run for 6 weeks, and is built around case studies of good practice from around the world.
This is a professional development course for which the teaching methods currently used in MOOCs – videos, forums and quizzes* – are appropriate, because teachers are professionals who know how to learn, and can learn a lot from each other. These methods are not sophisticated enough for teaching children or even undergraduates in the developing world, which is why the beneficiaries are still the rich. But they may help to train the professionals who can begin to make the difference.
The demand for education will continue to rise; we cannot afford to scale up at the current per student cost, in any sector, in any country. And even at the modest cost of $49, our CPD MOOC is a stretch for teachers from developing countries**.
If we are to have any hope of reaching our most ambitious educational goal of universal primary education, we have to find innovative ways of teaching. MOOCs could be part of the solution, but only if we start focusing on the problems we have.
Free university education for highly qualified professionals is not one of them.

* However, the UK’s FutureLearn does have more ambitious plans for the pedagogy it will support.
**Recently we asked Coursera for differential pricing by country, and I was delighted to see in their latest roadmap that they are responding to pressure on this, and will introduce it soon.

26 November 2013

By Jenny Parkes

Yesterday marked the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Around the world, campaigns aim to raise awareness at local, national and international level, broadcasting stark figures about the extent of violence faced by women and girls.
In our study of violence against girls in three mainly rural sites, 80% of girls in Mozambique, 83% of girls in Ghana, and 90% of girls in Kenya said they had experienced violence in the past 12 months.  While, increasingly, figures like these reveal how widespread violence is in girls’ and women’s lives, of particular concern is our lack of knowledge about what to do about it.
With funding from the UK’s Big Lottery Fund, ActionAid’s project, Stop Violence Against Girls in School, has over the past five years combined local community interventions with advocacy work and research to attempt to challenge violence through multi-level action. It has set up girls’ clubs and boys’ clubs in schools, Reflect circles to create dialogues with parents and community members, held workshops and training sessions on gender and violence with teachers and professionals, and has engaged in advocacy work at national and local level to strengthen clarity, consistency and implementation of national laws and policies.
At the end of the project we found that it has had some success in shifting attitudes and knowledge about gender violence and inequality. In some families, there has been a reduction in the burden of labour for girls and more girls are now in school. Girls in Mozambique and Ghana have become more likely to speak out about violence, and in all three countries girls who are members of girls’ clubs show greater confidence in taking action on violence. Community-based child protection structures developed by the project have improved coordination between traditional and formal justice systems. Often working collaboratively with other organisations, the project has influenced national governments to strengthen legislative and policy frameworks on violence against girls.
Some areas, however, have proved particularly resistant to change. Corporal punishment in schools is still commonplace, and where caning has reduced, sometimes it has been replaced with other harsh forms of punishment, like forcing children to kneel for long periods. While the girls’ clubs in Mozambique have helped girls in communities near cities to speak out about their experiences of sexual violence, open discussions about safe sex and relationships have proved difficult, especially in the most remote communities. There are still silences and stigma around sex and pregnancy. A girl in Ghana told us:
“I know of a friend who got herself pregnant because her mother could not afford and her father was no more. And a boy promised her he will help her and the day they had sex for the first time she got pregnant. My friend was attending primary school and that brought her education to a stop, but the boy continued his education.”
Our findings show the importance of multi-dimensional actions to challenge violence, and the critical importance of addressing not just the acts of violence but the inequitable norms and institutions that lie behind these acts. Challenging violence effectively in these contexts means addressing the combined effects of poverty, marginalisation and discrimination on girls, their families, schools and communities.

11 October 2012

By Elaine Unterhalter

The United Nations has declared today the world’s first International Day of the Girl Child. Events are being held around the world to publicise many aspects of girls’ lives and education features prominently.
The large global NGO Plan is publishing its annual review Because I am a Girl. This year it focuses on education, drawing on interviews with girls around the world, analysis of statistical data, and assessments of research, including some I have conducted with colleagues in a number of countries in Africa. The report brings out the challenges girls face to gain access to school, to be treated with dignity while they study, and to use their education to secure an adulthood where they are safe and have lives they value.
For example,  many girls  still struggle to have their decisions about health, sex and reproductive rights taken seriously. In many schools there is little active learning for girls or boys, and  teachers have little knowledge or training in gender equality. Teenage girls who choose unconventional careers  like Gloria Joy, the 18-year old trainee auto mechanic at Juba technical high school in South Sudan, interviewed in the Plan report, face multiple barriers. Gloria, despite her schooling and inspiration to work in this field, had to struggle  to get a loan to open a business,  be accepted as an apprentice,  and attract customers. Luck, information and persistence helped her. But for many there are not such happy endings.
The celebration of the first International Day of the Girl Child is touched with poignancy because of the headlines concerning one 14 year old girl, Malala Yousafzai, in Pakistan. She was shot in the head and neck on Tuesday, while she sat with classmates on a school bus in Mingora, in the Swat district. A spokesman for a Pakistani offshoot of the Taliban has claimed responsibility. All over Pakistan there has been an eruption of anger at this attack with many messages supporting Malala’s aspirations for schooling for girls.
Among her campaigning activities, Malala wrote a blog for the BBC’s Urdu service under the pseudonym Gul Makai (“cornflower”) and described her classmates’ fears that their educations would be abruptly stopped. She was awarded Pakistan’s first National Peace Award and had recently talked of setting up a vocational institute for marginalised girls in her area.
Malala’s bravery in speaking up, even though she had fears for her safety, is a clear reminder of the need for us to do more to help girls stay in school longer – too many of the poorest and most discriminated against leave with barely any experience of education. International Days like this are important for their symbolic significance, but they also remind us there is so much we do not know about the schooling of girls, their relations with their families and societies, the ways in which gender connects with other inequalities.
Around the world many governments, teachers’ organisations, small and large NGOs, employers, and institutions like universities are joining with UN organisations to promote gender equality and girls’ rights to education. The IOE is  part of this. This might be the first Day of the Girl Child, but it should not be the last of the enormous effort needed. On International Day of the Girl Child, please do whatever you can to support these aspirations.