Findings from the Ethiopian Pilot Project

Following its productive pilot project in Kenya, Eduvision, a Swiss eLearning technology provider, carried out and evaluated its first large-scale implementation in Ethiopia. The project, undertaken at two schools in Addis Ababa, was a team effort with GTZ (the German government’s agency for technical cooperation) to assess the educational and technical suitability of the Eduvision software. Beginning in September 2007, about 100 children and six teachers per school learned how to use a laptop and the related software. With a cost of only US$2.50 per month per child, the effort required a minimal initial investment. Scrutiny of the motivation of pupils and teachers, the overall promise of the related teaching methods, as well as the ease of acquiring the needed skills clearly proved the utility of the new technology.

Ethiopia faces significant educational challenges at every level. Despite attempts to provide free universal access to primary education, national statistics show that only sixty percent of school-age children go to school, with an average of 72 primary-school pupils for every teacher. As in other countries across the region, growing class sizes in Ethiopia are leading to difficulties in maintaining attainment levels. This environment demands sustained research and investment in the national educational sector.

To address these issues, Eduvision, as part of the Engineering Capacity Building Program (ECBP) of Germany’s GTZ, started its second large pilot project in Africa in September 2007. To support the ECBP project, the Italian government contributed approximately 50,000 laptops. With its strong network of regional partners, Eduvision was the obvious choice to do the job. Cooperating closely with others, Eduvision also fulfilled other tasks: The Company motivated and instructed teachers and pupils, helped to integrate laptops into the curriculum, and - in the process - brought parents and other relatives of the pupils on board so they, too, could learn and benefit.

The trial was run in two schools: Menelik II and Atze Naod. Initially, only the second grade was involved, but in the latter stages, Atze Naod expanded the participation to include seventh and eighth graders in the form of an after-school club. In total, twelve teachers were trained, six from each school. At Menelik, all six teachers taught with the XO laptops at some stage of the trial. At Atze Naod, however, only one teacher participated on a regular basis.

In order to design an appropriate approach for the project, Eduvision first considered the traditional Ethiopian pedagogical framework and its relation to the model that the programme aimed to foster. Education in Ethiopia rests on a long-established model of teaching influenced by both cultural and religious traditions In this system, politeness and obedience are the main qualities that teachers seek to instil in their students. A negative result of this system that the research revealed was a lack of attention on the pupil’s side; Eduvision’s approach is learner-based, which increases motivation.

The Eduvision platform installed in the Ethopian schools consists of three components: the Network Operations Centre (NOC), base stations and a piece of end-user software called Melepo. A further element is the use of digital textbooks.

What Eduvision and its partners found out in their evaluation offers promise:

• The majority of teachers observed that students paid more attention to the digital textbook than to their paperback textbooks. Several children also commented on their increased motivation when using Melepo.

• Towards the very end of the test period, teachers were also observed using structured group activities and competitions to teach their classes. This transition to effective Melepo use catalysed a method of teaching that the teachers themselves admitted they had rarely or never used.

• Teachers also realized that they needed to create structured lesson plans in order to cope with the introduction of the XO laptops. As a result, many of them also started to incorporate daily lesson plans into their other classes.

• In the current format, Melepo works most effectively with older children, where interaction and homework are significant components of the education. However, the educational games are beneficial for the younger children and serve to improve their motivation for learning.

Karim Toledano comments: “Melepo has been demonstrated to facilitate change in approaches to both teaching and learning styles, whilst operating within the structures of the pre-existing curriculum. It encourages diversification in the teaching approach and alternatives to rote-based learning. In addition, it increases motivation and enhances student collaboration.”

The lessons learnt throughout the initial pilot study will now be used in the forthcoming monitoring and evaluation exercise to be conducted alongside the introduction of 5000 XO laptops at five Addis Ababa schools in April 2008.

Ethiopia Implementation Report (Eduvision)

Link

www.eduvision.ch

Newsportal: eLearning in the School System