The Glitchy Global University

My work with the NGO, Community Development Network (CDN), has me on weekly zoom calls with partners in W. Africa.  Without fail, one of my African colleagues’ voices will go into robot slow-motion mode or glitch out, strobe-voice fashion. At that point, their square picture frame, which was not showing their face in order to reduce processing load, disappears from the screen. Someone says, “I think they’ve lost their connection.”  Lost connection. This is the connection that the world is just beginning to experience–the connection of being able to problem-solve with people from all over the globe and have valuable conversations in real-time.  Connection to shared content. Connection to shared learning.  This connection, which articles like “Systematic Changes in Higher Education” (Siemens and Matheos, 2022) praise as the future of education, is as tenuous as the zoom call connection.  

Siemens and Matheos describe shifts in future education based on the affordances of online learning tools and a fragmenting of university roles, stating,  “Global and distributed teaching and learning activities are possible due to development of applications (such as Elluminate) that allow for virtual classrooms that permit audio, video, presentations, and break out rooms. Social media such as blogs, social networking software, podcasts, wikis, and others, permit learners to connect with each other (and with educators) from around the world.”  However, sometimes the promised ideal is so bright that it blinds those with relatively easy access to the internet to the realities of low bandwidth or expensive internet in places like Ghana.  Current data from the International Telecommunication Union indicates that internet penetration is still vastly different in different countries.  

 While internet penetration is improving, it is not at a level to sustain education.  Several projects right now, like the one I am involved in with CDN, are bypassing the internet in favor of mobile hotspots for learning.  A RACHEL server (Remote Access Cellular Hotspot for Education and Learning) is a frisbee-sized hotspot that holds a terabyte of data and can be uploaded with open educational resources.  It is a mobile mini-library that does not depend on the internet. Anyone who comes within 200 ft of the RACHEL can download educational content onto their mobile devices.  It can hold Khan academy, Wikipedia, and any number of other educational resources. Although not using the internet may seem like a step backward in progress, it is an intermediary fix to connect people to education through mobile networks. It is not only CDN that is using these.  The World Librarians are a group of volunteer librarians who take twitter requests from learners in Africa, find needed resources, and send them back to be uploaded onto RACHEL servers (Hutton et al, 2021).  Furthermore, one of the ministries of education offices I visited in Ghana was developing a whole k-12 curriculum system that would be located on mobile servers and accessed through student and teacher tablets.  

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet system (https://www.starlink.com/) seems like a good solution to the problem, even though download speeds are not as fast as 5g at 100-200 mbts. However, Elon Musk is using this as a source of revenue.  The current cost is $499 for the equipment and $99 per month for access, which would be cost-prohibitive in the places of the world that need this most.  

All this is to say that while educationalists dream of universities holding hands across the globe, remember the zoom call where “they are not connected,” and turn our tech energy into finding equitable access to education

Hutton, S., Scheweir, C.,  Meyer, C., and Warukira, W.  (2021).  World Librarians: A System Providing Open Educational Resources for Offline Schools in Malawai and Kenya.  Open Education Conference (19 October 2021).  Virtual.  https://opened21.sched.com/event/moSk/world-librarians-a-system-providing-open-educational-resources-to-offline-schools-in-malawi-kenya

"Measuring digital development: Facts and figures 2021". Telecommunication Development Bureau, International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Retrieved 2022-01-14. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/FactsFigures2021.pdf

Siemens, G. & Matheos, K. (2022). Systemic Changes in Higher Education. In R. Kimmons (Ed.), Becoming an Open Scholar. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/open_scholar/systemic_changes

Starlink, https://www.starlink.com/.