OpenKenya Evaluating Educational Technologies (OCW and iLabs) Mohamed Haji Bryant Harrison Jonathan Harris November 22, 2005PROJECT DESCRIPTION............................................................................................. 1 SIGNIFICANCE/IMPORTANCE OF PROJECT........................................................ 5 KEY PARTICIPANTS..................................................................................................... 6 GOALS FOR IAP AND SPRING 2006 .......................................................................... 7 GOALS FOR THE FIRST YEAR................................................................................... 7 BUDGET............................................................................................................................ 8 FACULTY ADVISOR...................................................................................................... 9 2Project description Currently, there are many challenges facing education in Kenya which stem from a basic lack of funds, teachers, classrooms, and learning materials1. MIT has taken very important strides in the past few years to aid this relevant problem with two of its well-known initiatives: OpenCourseWare and iLabs. This project will focus on introducing, implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of OCW and iLabs in Kenya. The goal of this work is to establish a sustainable model for sharing and disseminating educational content to universities in this developing region of the world. In particular, OpenKenya will focus on evaluating the effectiveness of OCW at two universities and a high school. OCW mirror sites were installed at these locations several months ago, and the OpenKenya team will investigate metrics (i.e. access, use, and impact statistics) for these mirror sites to date. In addition, the OpenKenya team will explore the educational landscape in Nairobi, Kenya in order to determine the most effective way to introduce iLabs into the Kenyan curriculum. This project spans from September 2005 to September 2006. The purpose of the OpenKenya project is to evaluate the effectiveness of OCW in Kenya through two established initiatives: 1. The OCW mirror site program in Nairobi, Kenya (established in 2005.) During the summer of 2005, a mirror site of the OCW web site was installed at the University of Nairobi, Kikuyu campus in Kenya through the African Virtual University (AVU). In addition, two additional mirror sites were set up at Alliance High School and Aga Khan University, making MIT course material available to some of Kenya’s brightest students. So far, it is clear that the mirror sites have added great value for the affected students. The goal of this project is to gather specific data through surveys and conduct personal interviews with educators and students to understand the effectiveness of OCW along three well-defined dimensions: access, use, and impact. The team will also install tracking software on each of the mirror sites for the MIT OCW team based in Cambridge, MA. 2. The MIT Africa Internet Technology Initiative (MIT-AITI) self-learning program (established in 2003.) The MIT-Africa Internet Technology Initiative (MIT-AITI) is an innovative program created and managed by MIT students that integrates computers and internet technology into the education of students in African schools. MIT-AITI achieves this goal by sending MIT undergraduate and graduate students to three African nations for six weeks in order to conduct intensive classroom and laboratory sessions. In 2003, the MIT-AITI program introduced a self-learning track through which the top students in each country were asked to independently learn the curriculum that was being 1United States Agency for International Development, http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/initiatives/aei.html 3presented in lecture. They achieved this goal by forming groups and using resources such as the MIT OCW website, textbooks, the internet, and their peers to understand the material at hand. This program was revamped in 2004 and 2005, and OpenKenya’s goal is to determine the effectiveness of such a model on the education of African students through surveys and interviews. The other component of OpenKenya is to explore the possibility of launching iLabs in Kenyan universities especially at the University of Nairobi and Strathmore University. To further explore the level of interest from both universities, OpenKenya will conduct workshops at both institutions to demonstrate iLabs through live experiments. OpenKenya will also study the Internet infrastructure at these institutions, the curriculum to determine if iLabs can enrich any course, and the accessibility of computer laboratories to students among other relevant statistics. 4Significance/Importance of Project Education is vital to Africa's economic growth and lasting democracy, but there are many challenges facing education in Africa today. Lack of learning materials, few qualified teachers, and financial constraints are just but a few of the challenges. The AIDS Epidemics and famine have placed further limitations on what governments can spend on education. Given these challenges, the educational institutions in Kenya are not able to meet the needs of those seeking higher education. Therefore, we see a profound need to adopt innovative technologies to deliver content to those seeking higher education. The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) will overcome the space, time and money constraints that institutions are currently facing. At the same time, ICTs will provide African students with interactive educational content that is flexible and responsive to the needs of the individual student. Our project promises to break down traditional barriers to higher education in Kenya by delivering educational content to those who need it when they need it. Low bandwidth and poor Internet connectivity can limit how much ICTs can impact education in Kenya, and addressing bandwidth and connectivity issues requires huge financial investment that no African government can undertake. Therefore innovative alternatives that bypass connectivity are required. This project will install and configure OCW and iLabs on the local networks at universities, providing easy and fast access to students and faculty, thus significantly reducing bandwidth and connectivity limitations. Inadequate