Young adolescents and digital media: uses, risks and opportunities in low- and middle-income countries: a rapid evidence review

This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially mobile phones and the internet), together with the associated digital skills and practices, opportunities and risks, and forms of safety mediation, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The review is especially concerned with 10- to 14-year-old girls’ digital media uses, although little evidence specifically addressed this group. It is guided by two overarching research questions: 1. What do scholars and practitioners know about how young adolescents are using digital media (computers, mobile phones and other information and communication technologies, ICTs) and the key challenges these children face? What are the opportunities involved in their use of such media and what are most significant gaps in our knowledge? 2. What evidence is there of local, national and international development programmes’ effective use of digital media to target 10- to 14-year-olds (rather than older adolescents)? What are the most significant gaps in the existing knowledge about these interventions and their outcomes

InfoInternet for Education in the Global South: A Study of Applications Enabled by Free Information-only Internet Access in Technologically Disadvantaged Areas (authors' version)

This paper summarises our work on studying educational applications enabled by the introduction of a new information layer called InfoInternet. This is an initiative to facilitate affordable access to internet based information in communities with network scarcity or economic problems from the Global South. InfoInternet develops both networking solutions as well as business and social models, together with actors like mobile operators and government organisations. In this paper we identify and describe characteristics of educational applications, their specific users, and learning environment. We are interested in applications that make the adoption of Internet faster, cheaper, and wider in such communities. When developing new applications (or adopting existing ones) for such constrained environments, this work acts as initial guidelines prior to field studies.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, under review for a journal since March 201

Promoting Inclusive Higher Education in the digital age: Wrapping massive open online courses (MOOCs) for youth from marginalised communities in South Africa

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic led to the global shutdown of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) forcing the move from residential campuses to online learning. In South Africa, the shutdown further exacerbated the lack of access to Higher Education (HE) amongst youth, which adds to higher unemployment rates and perpetuates the cycle of poverty with detrimental consequences for society. However, in 2020 the forced move to online learning, and the use of freely available Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provided an opportunity to rethink accessto HE for youth from marginalised areas. In some cases, a blended learning approach has been adopted by universities to provide more flexible pathways to HE. The wrapping of MOOCs follows a similar process but can be specifically used to be inclusive of students traditionally excluded from HE. The aim of the research explores the extent to which wrapped MOOCs made in South Africa could serve as effective ‘boundary objects' for students to experience HE. This research aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) specifically in relation to the fourth goal that targets inclusive and quality education and promotes lifelong learning for all. It explores how MOOCs, if wrapped or blended in a face-to-face programmes could prepare young people from marginalised communities for the workplace in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The research aims to explore the characteristics of two wrapped MOOCs made in South Africa to make them more accessible to youth from marginalised communities. The researcher utilised a case study methodology and employed ethnographic methods to explore how MOOCs were wrapped to make them more accessible to youth in marginalised communities in South Africa. The cases were two learning contexts where MOOCs were wrapped for the youth from those communities. The data was analysed using concepts from Wenger-Trayner et al.'s (2015) Landscapes of Practice. One of the key concepts is the boundary object, which can ideally play a mediating role between knowledge practices across contexts. It can thus grant different forms of access to those who would otherwise have been excluded from specific ways of knowing, identity work and experience of digital technologies. The data found that some students were unaware that MOOCs existed. Students desired and accepted that MOOCs could be part of an offering of HE programmes or courses but mostly agreed that they would not take it on their own as they required the digital literacy, computer facilities and Internet to complete it. They preferred that it was wrapped within a face-to-face programme. Still, once they experienced taking it, they saw themselves as knowledgeable in taking MOOCs and the confidence to take online courses in the future. They attributed the social and epistemological access they received more to the programme than to the MOOCs. Most participants did not want MOOCs to replace HE institutions as they valued face-to-face engagement, that the wrapped MOOC format made possible. But the opportunity to learn on a digital platform and work online made them feel more equipped to choose their own pathways in the HE landscape. The study culminated in a set of characteristics that could make wrapped MOOCs effective ‘boundary objects'. The research recommends that future MOOCs be wrapped to be inclusive of these characteristics to enhance social and epistemological access to HE for students from marginalised areas. The contribution of this research would be to create a list of principles that allows for relevant MOOCs out of approximately 13500 MOOCs, that currently exist, to be used, adapted and wrapped by the HE sector or various stakeholders that provide training, education and skills to youth in marginalised or refugee communities. The Covid-19 pandemic shutdown impacted on the popularity of MOOCs where platforms like Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn attracted as many users in one month as they did in an entire year of 2019. The significance of the study was evident during the HE shutdown when access to educational resources became crucial in the remote and online teaching format. The research contributed theoretically in terms of applying a landscapes of practice framework to understand and extend online and blended learning provision to marginalised communities. Future studies can take the recommendations of this research and apply the list of principles to wrap MOOCs and other online courses within particular landscapes of practice to explore their effectiveness in promoting access to HE

Addressing Injustices through MOOCs: A study among peri-urban, marginalised, South African youth

The legacies of colonial rule continue to impact everyday life, particularly in education. These structural inequalities are often reinforced and amplified in online ‘global’ education through a form of digital neocolonialism, which is where hegemonic powers indirectly control or influence marginalised groups through the internet or information technology. In striving for justice-oriented online education models, this study analyses to what extent Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), produced both internationally and locally, support (or could support) the needs, preferences, and aspirations of marginalised South African youth and address the material, cultural-epistemic, political, and geopolitical injustices they face. To evaluate what South African peri-urban youth desire in their education and futures, as well as the challenges they experience, a seven-part survey was conducted with 250 youth from five townships in South Africa. Responses showed that whilst participants strongly value and aspire to further their education, financial difficulties, infrastructural barriers, family problems, and lack of emotional support and life mentorship limit them from achieving this. Participants reflected on how colonial and apartheid legacies have affected their educational experiences and identities through inferior quality of education, forced languages, forgotten histories and incongruent values, cultural norms and practices. In parallel, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 MOOC designers, from South Africa and the USA, to investigate the ways in which efforts, if any, were being made to reach students most in need of quality education. Interviews covered themes of openness, accessibility, and justice. It was found that, depending on the MOOC designer’s understanding of social justice and decolonial thought, they placed varying emphasis on addressing different forms of injustice. Some focused on resource, access and infrastructural barriers, while others focused on issues of content relevance and knowledge production. Furthermore, MOOC designers’ attempts to address injustices strongly related to their own identities and lived experiences, highlighting the importance of plurality of thought and epistemic diversity in the producers of MOOCs. Drawing on the historical injustices and lived experiences of the youth, and the attempts to address injustices by the MOOC designers, it was ascertained that there is no one size-fits-all formula to creating equitable MOOCs. Rather, depending on the purpose and target audience of the MOOC, nuanced approaches to addressing injustices are suggested. These approaches are shaped by various leverage points that influence the types of, and the extent to which, participatory methods, accessibility measures, knowledge sources, assessment and critical pedagogy are implemented. Additionally, the importance of these leverage points varies over the MOOC’s lifecycle, from inception and design, to implementation and assessment. Bearing in mind the broad-ranging injustices that youth participants raised, these approaches are presented with great caution that educational technologies and open education are not panaceas but if designed and used appropriately and justly, can be tools for liberation

Using ODL and ICT to develop the skills of the unreached: a contribution to the ADEA triennial of the Working Group on Distance Education and Open Learning

Innovation in technology is occurring at rapid pace thus shrinking the distances and making information and knowledge more than ever accessible to everyone irrespective of where the person resides. This paper consists of four main articles. The first one deals with technological trends. The second one focuses on the deployment and use of open and distance education mode in rural areas by documenting initiatives that embrace information and communication technologies (ICTs). Due to challenges faced in rural areas only a few success stories/cases currently exist and some of these are cited in this article. The challenges faced in the deployment of ICT enhanced ODL have been highlighted as well as the potential of developing and delivering effective and relevant ODL programmes in rural areas in order to ensure that issues of educational equity and social exclusion rural communities are adequately addressed. ICTs in ODL are perhaps the greatest tool to date for self-education and value addition to any community’s development efforts, yet poor rural communities particularly in Africa do not have the necessary awareness, skills or facilities to enable themselves to develop using ICTs. Inadequate ICT infrastructures in rural areas remain a major source for the digital divide in Africa and for under-performance of distance learners. The third one analyses the support provided to ODL learners who often encounter difficulties in completing their studies through the distance education mode due to loneliness, uncertainties and de-motivation. ICT has not been able to sufficiently support distance learners in overcoming those obstacles efficiently. An investigation regarding those learning supports has been conducted in ten distance learning institutions, along with an intensive literature review with the aim of understanding the high percentage of dropout rates of distant learners. The learners’ interactions have been scrutinized through content analysis of their synchronous exchanges, during a completely online course. After taking into account the limited technical and human resources in Africa, a technological virtual environment along with a pedagogical framework has been proposed with the aim of giving adequate educational support to them. The fourth article has explored The Open University (UK) and its efforts to use new technologies to deliver online courses to difficult-to- reach learners in prison environments. The case study analysed here is an international course (called, B201- Business Organisations and their environments) which also touches an African cohort of learners. The implications for designing and delivering online ODL to the complex unreachable environments of prisons anywhere, and particularly in Africa, have been discussed

Education Workforce Initiative: Initial Research

The purpose of this initial research is to offer evidenced possibilities in the key areas of education workforce roles, recruitment, training, deployment and leadership, along with suggested areas for further research to inform innovation in the design and strengthening of the public sector education workforce. The examples described were identified through the process outlined in the methodology section of this report, whilst we recognise that separation of examples from their context is problematic – effective innovations are highly sensitive to context and uncritical transfer of initiatives is rarely successful. The research aims to support the Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) in moving forward with engaging education leaders and other key actors in radical thinking around the design and strengthening of the education workforce to meet the demands of the 21st century. EWI policy recommendations will be drawn from a number of country level workforce reform activities and research activity associated with the production of an Education Workforce Report (EWR). This research has informed the key questions, approach and structure of the EWR as outlined in the Education Workforce Report Proposal. Issues pertaining to teaching and learning in primary and secondary education are at the centre of the research reported here; the focus is on moving towards schools as safe places where all children/ young people are able to engage in meaningful activity. The majority of the evidence shared here relates to teachers and school leaders; evidence on learning support staff, district officials and the wider education workforce is scant. Many of the issues examined are also pertinent to the early childhood care and education sector but these are being examined in depth by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative. Resourcing for the Education Workforce was out of scope of this initial research but the EC recognises, as outlined in the Learning Generation Report, that provision of additional finance is a critical factor in achieving a sustainable, strong and well-motivated education workforce, particularly but not exclusively, in low and middle income countries. The next stage of EWI work will consider the relative costs of current initiatives and modelling of the cost implications of proposed reforms. EWI aims to complement the work on teacher policy design and teacher career frameworks (including salary structures) being undertaken by other bodies and institutions such as Education International, the International Task Force on Teachers for 2030 and the Teachers’ Alliance, most particularly by bringing a focus on school and district leadership, the role of Education Support Professionals (ESPs) and inter-agency working

Exploring the role of ICT-enabled social innovation for the active inclusion of young people

This Report presents the final results of the study ‘ICT-enabled social innovation services for active inclusion of young people’ (IESI-Youth) which has been commissioned by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) and implemented by Arcola Research in 2014. The overall objective of the study was to review the state of the art in the domain of active inclusion services for young people, with a specific focus on how ICTs can support active inclusion of disadvantaged youth to strengthen their skills and capacities and support them to participate fully in employment and social life. The study was conducted as preparatory activity contributing to the development of the broader research project on 'ICT enabled Social Innovation in support of the Implementation of the Social Investment Package (IESI) being implemented by JRC-IPTS in collaboration with DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL).JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

The impact of work seeker support platforms on the development of South Africa's unemployed youth

Youth unemployment remains an enduring and significant challenge in South Africa, with 43.2 % of people aged 15-34 and 59% aged 15-24 remaining unemployed, respectively. Similarly, economic discouragement among young people is on the rise. Micro-level barriers contribute significantly to the inability to access employment opportunities. These include the low skills levels of many young South Africans, the high costs of job-seeking, a lack of social capital, a lack of access to relevant job-seeker information, as well as the adverse mental health impacts of alienation, poverty and unemployment. With the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rise of ICT for Development (ICT4D) interventions, several digital solutions have been developed in South Africa. These attempt to provide low-cost, scalable solutions to youth unemployment by addressing some of the barriers that young people experience. Despite the increased prevalence of such digital interventions, the degree to which they are capable of engaging and transforming the lives of the unemployed youth they target remains unclear. With increasing investments into 4IR interventions to address youth unemployment, closer examination is required. Accordingly, this study appraises one digital work seeker support platform in South Africa that provides skills matching and development opportunities to unemployed youth. The study focuses specifically on their experience of the platform. It uses post phenomenological constructs to analyse how young unemployed South Africans interpret the digital intervention and examines how these interpretations promote or inhibit their sense of agency and wellbeing. The findings suggest that digital youth employment interventions can inadvertently exacerbate some of the existing barriers, while also providing insight into how ICT4D interventions may be reimagined to address some of the factors that drive economic discouragement among young people