Reflection on ICT4D and ICT4E and the Importance of Applying Integrative Leadership Concepts
January 29, 2013
I signed up to this course to further think of ways in which we can collaboratively address grand challenges. The biggest challenge that I face in my work is how to improve educational systems in developing countries through technology. With education linked closely to health, I focused this reflection on my research. While I do not work closely with health concerns, they are present in education in two ways. First, some governments must decide whether to feed more students or hire more instructors. Secondly, education can help individuals to learn how to react to dangerous situations and improve their survival skills. Education can teach us how to survive or “how to fish”. Education is linked to health directly / short term, and indirectly / long term.
Improving educational programs through technology is a complex and daunting challenge especially when working with very limited resources and high levels of poverty in a developing country. As Larry Cuban suggest, technology is often underused and oversold in classrooms, yet we can also not deny the impact it has on society. Our satellites, health systems, airplanes, telecommunications, and stock market rely on computers to increase their efficiency. What technology has accomplished in the last 20 years and its influence in modern society are difficult to overstate. Because of technology many of the challenges that we currently face may eventually be seen as solved “mystery problems”. As online learning and MOOCs improve, and individuals increasingly have access to powerful mobile phones we may discover new ways in which to address development challenges including health concerns (Haiti and cellphones is a good example). One of the most promising recent developments is the growing adoption of mobile phones which currently exceeds 6 billion subscriptions. Increasingly through crowdsourcing and collaboration, grand challenges that were previously too wicked for an individual are being addressed by the many. Many projects have benefited from sharing their efforts through open source collaboration such as Mozilla, Apache, and Linux. Yet while some problems may be solved through new technological developments, the balance between technology, education, and development in the broadest lens, or the balance between pedagogy, content and technology at the instructional level are difficult paradoxes to manage.
When looking at the complexity of a problem it is possible to freeze and decide for inertia. One of the lessons that I will take away from this course is that it is possible to work together with groups of individuals with different viewpoints. In the case of my work it is important to include local stakeholders into the decision-making process which is often overlooked to the detriment of the program. One of my favorite parts about the forum was its focus in bringing together both food producers and animal right activists. Unfortunately, often in technology adoption projects they fail to include multiple stakeholders and prepare everyone for implementation of the project. Instead they simply drop technology inside of classrooms and hope for the best. The speed in which projects are implemented is supported partly by the argument that it increases the rate of adoption. And while this may be true, the effectiveness of the intervention also drops significantly. The cost in effectiveness and resources could take away from greater investments in health services, school lunches, and other implementations that could have a greater impact in the life of students and their educational outcomes. If more projects were to emphasize that “slow progress is progress” as we discussed in class, implementations would be more efficient and effective.
Parting from the importance of collaboration, technology adoption projects should do more to find common ground. Computers are flexible in what they can be used for and if there is a one to one adoption program or a class set, one of the most important considerations is to maximize their utility. A difficult paradox in technology adoption programs is the desire from some instructors for maintaining the status quo and the desire of others for change. This balance must be carefully considered. Having worked as an IT Fellow and as a researcher for CEHD’s iPad initiative, I have seen some faculty members transition from being technology skeptics to feeling more comfortable with using these tools. A way in which we can obtain this outcome is by increasing instructors’ comfort level with technology. This could be achieved by having circle conversations where they share their opinions of technology. Circles and open space technology discussions can increase comfort and improve the level of adoption.
Also in educational technology, the TPACK model addresses the paradox between three elements: pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and technology knowledge. Instructors generally are more uncomfortable with their technological mastery as students may be as knowledgeable as they are in this space. Because of this, it is important emphasize that technology changes so quickly that is essentially not possible to become an expert on technology for a long period of time without continuous learning. With this in mind, instead of adopting the newest gadgets, it is more effective to think of a goal and envision how technology can best address this objective. Open space technology can also help in mapping faculty concerns. This is especially applicable when working with an educational program in a developing country. Every technology carries with it some biases and being a foreign product can be a major concern. However, instead of thinking of how technology can erode an oral culture, technological developments can be seen as a way to preserve local knowledges, “other” voices, and oral traditions. Instead of thinking of whether to implement a technology adoption program or to improve the school health program, when thinking of the situation as a paradox, stakeholders could agreed to use computers to more effectively track student health needs, while also using them to share educational programming that serves a resource for teaching certain health related modules.
Before participating in this course, I had a limited set of tools through which I could facilitate a discussion in the hope of finding common ground. I was primarily familiar with holding meetings and organizing focus groups. While this format also encourages a dialogue, it lacks several of the reflection pieces and the openness that the Common Ground Forum on Animal and Human Welfare and the open space technology facilitated. Two of my favorite elements in the forum where the ability for participants to move around when working on a solution and for there to be parts in the forum where everyone interacted together, and parts where interaction took place only at the table level. The variety and differences between activities kept ideas flowing and a sequential structure, filtering element, to the conversation. Learning how to map a polarity was one of the most enjoyable sections of the forum. While we mapped a polarity in terms of values (my values vs. your values) and most of the participants in our table held similar values, they were able to visualize themselves in the opposing stance, mentioning the negative aspect of their position and the positive aspects of the position held by “others”.
Finally, while I described a few potential polarities, the complexity of education, technology and development highlight many possible polarities. As a field it would be helpful for experts to get together and find common ground and map what they consider to be the most important polarities. It was interesting to see how Table 8 moved away from the original paradox into one they were more interested in discussing. Overall, as a constant investment technology adoption needs to be managed, juggled. Technology adoption is a constant and not a one-time problem that has a solution. Instead it requires constant reconsideration. In terms of Finding Common Ground Forums it would be interesting to see how the internet could help host a larger discussion of a topic while maintaining most of the elements of the forum and moving from the broader discussion online into crowdsourcing innovative projects. While InCommons has some of these elements, I believe it can become even more effective!
Many complex problems including technology adoption for education in development countries, or food safety, gun control, taxation, health insurance are complex and wicked in nature especially when looked from a broader societal level lens. When comparing interventions it can become an “either, or” problem, or it could be perceived as a “continuum” problem, especially when working with a project with a high cost which resources could be used for a different initiative, it is important to include more stakeholders to ensure that the initiative integrates the concerns of others and helps address multiple problems. Failure to account for these considerations can limit a program to the worst possible quadrant that of high cost and low impact. In a basic polarity model an initiative in a school should be compared with the school as it stands vs. the school with the potential changes and how the concerns of instructors and students can be best accounted for.
Overall, being part of the workshop helped me realize that it is possible for people who are very certain of their viewpoint to benefit from talking to others who are approaching a situation from a different perspective. Speaking with intention and listening with attention are very important skills to develop. During the final day for the course, the workshop allowed me to experience how a grand challenge can be discussed and how a group can act upon those differences to bring about positive changes. I left the course with a new gained perspective. From the workshop I strengthened my conviction that while we will likely not agree on all points there should be a way in which to bring about positive changes. Other tools we explored such as the DiSC personality test and the Strengthfinder quiz which I completed for the Student Leadership Team have helped me developed a greater awareness of my weaknesses and strengths. Part of what is fascinating about individual differences, which applies to my work for GAPSA, is how by working with people with different skills sets we can obtain a better result. Improving as an active listener will help me in the future especially when applying qualitative methods.
As someone who has a broad interest in multiple issues where I can only have a marginal impact, I am concerned with improving my ability to work in teams, and in adequately assessing my own strengths and those of others while emphasizing that everyone has a positive contribution to share. With every ICT4D (Technology for Development) and ICT4E (Technology for Education) project the equation of what is the best intervention to implement will vary and its effectiveness will likely rely on high levels of collaboration. Cross-cultural competence is also an important aspect of development work. I hope to apply many of these techniques in the future along with others that I have learned in the past, which I am happy to include in my toolbox. Thank you for sharing with us your knowledge and experience!
