The European Commission is in the process of reflecting the past, present and future of telecentres or, in general, public Internet access points (PIAP) or, even in a broader sense, e-Inclusion Intermediaries (eI2).
Amongst others, there are four important issues that are guiding this reflection:
What has the impact been so far.
How has the techno-social scenario changed since they were initially born: increasing adoption of ICTs, importance of broadband, mobile Internet, etc.
How has the socio-economic scenario also changed, i.e. the economic and debt crisis in Europe.
According to the preceding points, what should be done in the future and how, that is, how public policies to foster the Information Society should be designed in matters of universal access/usage.
In this framework, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) organized an Expert Workshop on Measuring the Impact of eInclusion Intermediaries in Europe: towards an impact assessment practice?, that took place in May 3-4 in Seville, Spain, and to which I was invited to participate and to contribute with a position paper.
My position paper should verse on the future of telecentres in Europe in 2020, and it was supposed to be what I call a “grounded opinion”: grounded, because it is based on both personal/professional experience and lots of readings; opinion, because, all in all, I was asked to provide my own point of view, what would I do was I to design the policy that would deal with e-Inclusion Intermediaries.
Position paper: eInclusion Intermediaries in Europe: horizon 2020
State of the development of the Information Society
I believe that the development of the Information Society has come not to a dead end, but near a point of stagnation:
The industry and governments are most of the time still thinking in terms of infrastructures: how much, how are they managed, what is the regulation to bind them and what is they state of usage (usually in percent of saturation).
Users only care about a huge supply of content and services (for whatever the use) and that these run on affordable infrastructures.
This is, of course, a simplification. But a peek at what governments are measuring and what media are broadcasting gives us an idea of the tremendous bias towards the preceding aspects of the Information Society.
The problem with this scenario is that it has no future, as policies centred in infrastructures are targeting an almost non-existent problem:
In general terms, physical access is becoming a minor issue (remember: Europe 2020). It already is, especially if we do not take into account as an indicator “households with Internet access”, but “people covered by access to Internet”.
The former point is due, in part, because many last mile issues have been solved (e.g. with mobile Internet, e.g. with public Internet access points such as telecentres, libraries, cybercafes, schools and many other venues).
The supply of content and services is buoyant.
The missing gap: capacity building
On the other hand, the two growing problems remain unaddressed by public policies:
A stable share of ‘refuseniks’, that choose not to use the Internet for several reasons.
A growing share of citizens that do need digital skills and literacies that they lack or have to acquire when and if possible.
These two gaps have two main consequences:
An ICT sector which a shortage of supply in terms of highly qualified workers and human capital in general.
A quality of usage of the Internet characterized by inefficacy and inefficiency, and that many find will be (already is) the core of a second digital divide, deeper that the digital divide of access and more difficult to fix because of its (human) nature.
State of the question, the missing gap and e-Inclusion Intermediaries
How do e-Inclusion Intermediaries face the state of the question and the missing gap? In my own (grounded) opinion, either they change or they will perform badly.
Telecentres (understood as not-for-profit and for-development-aimed) will suffer from economic resources shortage, because of the economic crisis and because of Internet penetration. Cybercafes (understood as for-profit and comercially-aimed) will suffer from social sustainability shortage, because of the economic crisis (what solutions are you providing?) and also because of Internet penetration.
Most e-Inclusion Intermediaries have traditionally provided or recently began to provide services related to e-skills. The problem is that those skills are becoming much more complex than simple techonological skills and, indeed, it is a set of digital literacies and capacities that is required. Are eI2 responding to that?
In the same train of though of literacies, what we have found in our conversion from an Industrial Society to an Information Society is that we have done quite good in learning or appropriating technologies an to applying/adapting them to our usual processes. But we have definitely failed in improving most processes and socioeconomic transformation is but a good bunch of “good practices” that we all know but cannot replicate.
A forecast/proposal for e-Inclusion Intermediaries
The telecentre should become an eCentre, a centre that is not a physical place, but a reference resource that can actually be located in a specific location, or embeded within an organization. Telecentres should be insourced in other institutions: in a firm, in a civic centre, in a library, in a government, in an NGO…
Complementary to the former statement, many of the telecentre functions can and should be outsourced. There is evidence that the probability of survival of a telecentre is linked to it being part of a telecentre network: share knowledge, share resources, share contents and services. Outsourcing can take the shape of a core+franchises or a flat network. But reinventing the wheel should be forbidden.
If we believe in the insourcing/outsourcing pair, partnerships come naturally: e-Inclusion Intermediaries should complement a shared project with their added value, while other partners should be left to do the same. Partnerships with governments in the field of sheer “for development” inclusion or fostering e-government; partnerships with the private sector to leverage the expertise in the field and sell it for the sake of economic sustainability; look out for firms to be included as targets of eI2.
Of course, purity should be abandoned: no more either telecentre or cybercafe. It’s about e-Centres and it is about to provide knowledge. The function is what matters and not the means: the function is part of the mission, the means are part of the business/operating plan.
But the function is not fostering ICTs, the function is Inclusion. The ICT centre has to become a Centre-on-ICT-steroids. It is the community — the target — what matters, it is about supporting neighbourhoods, schools, entrepreneurs, living labs… not about supporting ICTs. But we do it with ICTs because we believe in its huge potential.
Bermúdez Ferran, I., Peña-López, I., Delgado Alonso, X., Merino Alcántara, M. & Laín Escandell, B. (2011). Qualificació professional: Dinamització de l’Espai TIC. Barcelona: Institut Català de les Qualificacions Professionals. [Follow the link for the Spanish Version. There is a draft version of this paper in English: ask me if you want it]
Sornamohan, V. (2012). “Telecentre Matters: Getting the Basics Right”. In Information Technology in Developing Countries, February 2012, 22 (1). Ahmedabad: Centre for Electronic Governance.
When we speak about leadership in a digital age, we use to list plenty of “new” skills that the “new” leader should have, namely: problem solving, critical thinking, team-working, etc. While I might share this or any other combination of skills that one may make up, the problem I find with this approach is that it focusses too much on the consequences and not on the cause, on trying to deal with the resulting scenario of the deep changes we are witnessing instead of trying to understand the causes behind that very same change. In other words, most lists of 21st Century Skills are symptomatic when they should be systemic.
In the following interview (in Spanish) for The Project I tried to depict what is a leader in a digital era and, by construction, what is an “Enterprise 2.0″ — a term with which I do not feel very comfortable, but that everybody seems to understand (which is what matters).
The baseline is that we have succeeded in digitizing information and communications, with two major consequences: the end of scarcity and transaction costs, and the substitution of human mind-work by machines. In this context, two main strategies arise:
The substitution of hierarchical structures by horizontal networks, which imply being able to work very differently, enabling connections.
The need to master digital skills — a complex set of — as the new landscape is digital.
Networks
In an industrial society, goods are scarce (apples are not infinite, nor are sheep or any other resource) and working with them requires transaction costs.
Hierarchies and intermediaries used to be efficient and effective ways to cut down transaction costs while working with scarce goods. Information — which was embedded in physical supports as books or brains, both of them scarce — was also scarce and costly to handle. Thus, decision making had to be centralized: only the one on top would be able to have all the information necessary to make an informed decision.
When we digitize our inputs (information), the way we apply labour (knowledge), capital (computers), and our output (information and/or knowledge), goods become non-scarce (as material goods used to be) and dealing with them (storage, “handling”, transformation, distribution, etc.) becomes costless.
The hierarchical architecture becomes now a burden: information has to artificially circulate along the chain of command, infringing an added cost in matters of time and, sometimes, matter. When information is abundant and transaction costs are few, networks are more effective and efficient than hierarchies. That is a fact.
In a digital society, the good leader is the one that enables the network to be, to run smoothly, to create connections between all the nodes, to shift the process of decision making to the nearest and most appropriate node, more likely to be much more knowledgeable about a specific matter than any other node in the network.
Digital skills
Not only understanding that the network is the new architecture is what is needed, but also being able to live in it. And as networks are boosted by digital technologies, a collection of digital competences apply.
When asked for an example where all these skills can be put into practice, I like to cite Analyzing digital literacy with a single simple tweet, where each and every conception of digital literacy can be explored by using a message on Twitter.
Social networking sites
A typical question that usually comes at this point is whether firms should be on social networking sites. In an interview (also in Spanish) entitled Redes sociales: ¿oportunidad u obligación? (Social networking sites: opportunity or obligation?) I talked about this.
The main points of the interview are the following four:
Living in the social networking sites is both a problem and a requisite of the “new times”. On the one hand, as social animals, we have to acknowledge that social networking sites are boosting our social potential: committing with a cause, hanging out with friends or engaging in collaborative work are much more easy when gone digital. On the other hand, if we are knowledge workers (and we increasingly are), social networking sites are tools which usage we should master.
Digital technologies are becoming general purpose technologies. This means that each and every aspect of our lives will be affected and transformed by digital technologies. And now that we just added the “social layer” onto the Internet, we will never more be able to tell a social networking site from the “rest of” the Internet and vice versa.
This is a change of era, not a collection of small changes. Institutions will be radically transformed as will be the concept of citizen (or worker, in the context of businesses).
Thus, we have to acknowledge and understand those changes. And we have to acquire the necessary (digital) skills to deal with the new scenario that is unfolding before our eyes.
Explaining these concepts with a single example (that is, all the concepts using the very same example for all of them) is not always easy, so you end up using different examples with each category or concept. Today I just found that single example that can be used to explain all of them.
This tweet seems coded by the Enigma encryption machine. Decoding it definitely requires much more than what the usual definition of digital literacy implies, but a complex set of skills or competences as the one described above:
Technological literacy: Easy at it may seem at first sight, many people just do not get how twitter works. It is as simple to operate (“just a 140 car. message”) as complex to understand how it works as a whole. Add to this that you have to be following either @brlamb or any of the hashtags to be able to notice the new tweet. And that you can follow them in several different ways, including different technologies, platforms and devices. Definitely, not that easy.
Informational literacy: There are three kinds of links in Brian Lamb’s tweet. At least two of them feature “strange” signs (@ and #) and the other one looks (or maybe does not) like your usual link, but lacking the http:// part (not to speak about the www.). Informational literacy is about telling the difference from those different links, what do they mean and where do they head towards if one clicks onto them. Informational literacy is about being able to find out that @grantpotter and @cogdog are two people (that’s more or less obvious once you’ve clicked on the respective links), that #ds016radio is the free streaming station used for the Digital Storytelling MOOC course, and that #etug refers to the Educational Technology Users Group Spring 2011 Workshop. Easy to find out for the experienced user, those last two do require an effort for the unexperienced one.
Media Literacy: The tweet is accompanied by an image. Its meaning is absolutely related to the information gathered in the tweet (as one would expect) and so it completes the message. Nevertheless, media literacy is not about the image, but about the crossmedia and crossplatform factors implied by that tweet. The actual message is that for you to get the whole piece of information you have to browse at least 4 websites (Twitter, with information about the profiles and the hashtag timelines; the course, the radio station and the event website) and then you have to tune in yet another device to listen to the actual radio. Indeed, the word “simulcast” already warns you that it will be much more complex than opening a book, sitting and reading. Add to this that you can add your soundcraft to #ds106 radio, by using DROPitTOme, a way to operate Dropbox. Oh, and yes, the image was uploaded to a companion service to Twitter, yfrog. Let us acknowledge that this cloud computing thing is a complex one to say the least.
Digital presence: It is very different identifying who the author or who the people mentioned in of the tweet are, from knowing what is their relationship and what is the meaning of them being together doing what is told in the message. But, more important than that, is what will imply for you being related with them. Answering or retweeting Brian Lamb’s message will tell everyone that you are interested in instructional technology. Following Brian would reinforce that message, and being followed back by him and/or other people from his closest professional network can end up implying the fact that you indeed agree with the ideas that this network more or less share: educational resources should be open, learning should strongly be based on building (constructivism) and remixing and working with your peers (connectivism), education has a way out of institutions (edupunk), and so [by the way, my apologies for the simplifications]. There are many messages whose information is about who you are rather than a transmission of rough data.
e-awareness: Taken at a systemic level, Brian Lamb’s tweet talks about very important things. We have just mentioned connectivism or edupunk. But implicit in the message’s 126 characters is the understanding of what is a massive open online course (MOOC) or how an amplified event works. Full understanding of the tweet requires awareness on how information and communication technologies are (or are potentially) changing the landscape of education, how the educational system and educational institutions are being threatened on their very same core and foundations, how the roles of teachers are (or should be) shifting from lecturers to mentors, etc. E-Awareness is about knowing the systemic and strategic implications of living in a knowledge society; and, implicitly, that tweet is talking just about that.
Now, those are 126 characters charged with meaning. If a single simple tweet requires so much digital competence, what is needed for living your daily live at full throttle? What for the exercise of democracy and citizen participation? What for health? What for education? What for love and friendship?
During the 250 years of our industrial society, capital owners (capitalists) have been the ones that have ruled the world, the ones that are in power.
Our democratic system is shaped according to this industrial society and its power relationships.
In the upcoming knowledge society, the ones that will be able to manage cleverly knowledge by means of digital tools (digerati) are likely to have a higher share or power in all the aspects of life, especially the government (goverati).
We need to work to make access to knowledge as widespread as possible — access to infrastructures, digital competences, effective usage — so to avoid replacing the existing plutocracy with a new e-aristocracy.
After that event, the director of the Review of University and the Knowledge Society (RUSC), Josep Maria Duart, asked me to coordinate a monograph on that same subject, the Digital Divide, but within the framework of Higher Education. This monograph has just been published: Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education.
The monograph aims at giving an comprehensive overview to the topic of the Digital Divide, from infrastructures to the more philosophic concepts, and from mere access to impact, always related to Education and, most especially (though not exclusively) to Higher Education. Following are the abstracts and links to the full text articles. The introduction is not (only) your usual introduction, but also a sort of a roadmap that wants to explain the structure and rationale behind the monograph. Enjoy your reading and don’t stop you from sending your feedback to the authors. Last, but not least, I want to thank Matti Tedre, Fredrick Ngumbuke, Jyri Kemppainen, Neil Selwyn, Jonatan Castaño-Muñoz (and other persons that at last could not make it) for their support and contribution to this project. I cannot but also thank Elsa Corominas for her tireless editing effort, and Michael van Laake and Shirley Burgess for their empathy and understanding when reviewing and translating the manuscripts. Thank you all.
Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education (Introduction) Ismael Peña-López
This is the introductory article to the monograph “Redefining the Digital Divide in Higher Education”. The article describes a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon of the digital divide and digital access, based on Marc Raboy and Mark Warschauer’s research. This approach depicts the evolution from mere physical access to effective use of information and communication technologies in the field of higher education. Within this framework, the articles in the monograph are presented highlighting their role in contributing to a comprehensive approach and reflection on the digital divide in Higher Education.
Infrastructure, Human Capacity, and High Hopes: A Decade of Development of e-Learning in a Tanzanian HEI Matti Tedre, Fredrick Ngumbuke, Jyri Kemppainen
Tumaini University, Iringa University College in Tanzania began to develop technology-enhanced learning in 1999. At the beginning of the process, the college had no public computer laboratories. The e-learning capacity was gradually developed over the following 11 years: computer laboratories, a local area network, an electronic library collection, a dedicated IT support department, Internet connections, electronic presentations, a B.Sc. program in IT, video lectures, and online learning. In this article, we analyse the complex network of challenges that we faced during the development process. We discuss technical issues with ICT equipment, system administration, and networks, and we analyse socio-cultural issues with training, funding, and pedagogy.
From Laptops to Competences: Bridging the Digital Divide in Education Ismael Peña-López
Most of the existing literature that deals with the digital divide in the educational system focuses either on schools or universities, but rarely do we see a vertical approach where the system is considered as a whole. In this paper we relate initiatives that aim to bridge the digital divide in the current situation in higher education. We discuss why policies that focus on infrastructures (e.g. laptops) are not the answer, as they mostly leave digital competences unattended, leading to (or not helping to amend) the digital void in universities in matters of skills. We end by proposing a general framework to define digital skills so that they are included in syllabuses at all stages of the educational path.
Degrees of Digital Division: Reconsidering Digital Inequalities and Contemporary Higher Education Neil Selwyn
Whilst many authors are now confident to dismiss the notion of the digital divide, this paper argues that inequalities in ICT use in contemporary higher education are of growing rather than diminishing importance. In particular, it argues that there is an urgent need for the higher education community to develop more sophisticated understandings of the nature of the digital divisions that exist within current cohorts of university students – not least inequalities of ‘effective’ use of ICT to access information and knowledge. With these thoughts in mind, the paper presents a review of recent research and theoretical work in the area of digital exclusion and the digital divide, and considers a number of reasons why digital exclusion remains a complex and entrenched social problem within populations of higher education students.
Digital Inequality Among University Students in Developed Countries and its Relation to Academic Performance Jonatan Castaño-Muñoz
Research on the digital divide has shown that it is important to study more than just the differences between those who do or do not have Internet access. Other dimensions that should currently be studied are: Internet skills, time spent on the Internet and, in particular, the use people make of the Internet. For each of these it is important to study the determinants and social consequences. In this paper we first present an overview of these dimensions and their determinants, and secondly analyse the influence of the dimensions with respect to the academic performance of university students. The analysed data, in agreement with international research, demonstrate that a) the effects of the Internet on academic performance are not direct, but mediated by variables and, b) the positive effects of the Internet are more pronounced in those students whose background is already more favourable for achieving better academic results without using the Internet, in agreement with the knowldege gap hypothesis.
e-Competences in the European Framework: literacies in the XXIst Century Cristóbal Cobo
Europe is doing pretty well (in relationship with the rest of the World) in broadband adoption and Internet users. But… what do people do with broadband in the Internet? For instance, the Chinese blogosphere (with much lower Internet adoption) is larger than the US and EU blogospheres combined.
Social networking sites have become platforms where to informally develop digital skills.
Digital skills might be related with the educational level, but there is contradictory data to validate this statement. Indeed, we quite often find no relationship at all. What is nevertheless clear is that the digital divide and the e-competences divide have much in common with other development divides.
There’s been a huge concern to bring equipment inside schools, to bring computers and connectivity into the classrooms. The question being: are them students learning more? In general, we do not find any evidence between more access and usage of ICTs and higher performance in education. And not only this, but also ICTs haven’t brought any change at the methodological level, any pedagogical innovation. If any relationship was found, it is between performance at school and access and usage at home.
Indeed, beyond a specific threshold, more ICT availability does not imply higher ICT usage… but, quite often, just the contrary.
e-Competences are meta competences: a compendium of several competences, including their own framework: a long-term agenda, stakeholder partnerships, research and development.
Though youngsters show an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, the impact of ICTs in youngsters has been overrated.
e-Awareness as the most important of e-competences:
understand the importance of e-competences
promote a constant update of such competences
promote a professional use or application of them
promote the acquisition of such abilities
e-Inclusion: the Information Society does not work if we only support the ones that had the best chances to be educated, to have a good job, etc. And a good starting point is de-elitize the advanced ICT users.
Some proposals for e-competences acquisition:
Uniformity vs. consistency
Constant updating
Do not reduce them to ICT usage
Validate informal e-skills
Incentives
Some final thoughs
The impact of ICTs in education has not been the one expected
Integration of ICTs in education demands deep changes
The potential of ICTs to develop a continuous learning is huge
Proposals for policies in e-competences
Integral adoption of ICTs in education, including innovative pedagogy, teacher training, new learning environments, etc.;
Use ICTs to enrich informal learning spaces, contextual learning, collaborative learning, blended learning, innovative and continuous learning;
Forget about instrumental standards, but go in the direction of building principles and standards based on actualization and recognition, related with digital citizenship
Move towards e-maturity: find the proper application for ICTs. ICTs are not for everything and everyone and everywhere. And unlink e-competences with the number of computers and usage time.
Q: The abolition of censorship and other restrictive practices, will it help in e-competences adoption? A: Yes, it would help, but we also have to forget about a 1:1 relationship between people and computers, or that ICTs are going to bring solutions to each and every problem (like lack of democracy). But, yes, of course, it is a necessary condition (not sufficient) that governments become e-aware.
Jordi Palau: sure the new generation of Web 2.0 technologies won’t help education? They’ll help, but the change, the real change, is at another level.
I am professor at the School of Law and Political Science of the Open University of Catalonia, and researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute and the eLearn Center of that university.
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