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Online Education: What Can It Deliver? A Special Report from the Development Gateway

The Development Gateway Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization. The Development Gateway puts the Internet to work for developing countries and provides innovative Internet solutions for effective aid and e-government, thus increasing access to critical information, building local capacity, and bringing partners together for positive change.

The Development Gateway has posted a Special Report called “Online Education: What Can It Deliver?” that looks at lessons learned, innovations that work, and the future of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education for developing countries. It includes commentary from educators working in the field of ICT for education, private sector developers of online training packages, and case studies of successful e-learning projects in developing countries. It also contains survey responses from members of the Development Gateway’s online communities about the promises and challenges of using online education. These members are primarily from the developing world and are working in this field.

Three expert roundtables are featured in the Special Report. Participants in the discussion on “Can It Solve the Education Crisis in Developing Countries?” are Bob Moon, Professor of Education at the Open University (UK) and founding director of TESSA (Teacher Education for Sub-Saharan Africa), Susan D'Antoni, head of the Virtual Institute of the Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), created by UNESCO, Paris, and Stewart Marshall, Director of the Distance Education Centre at the University of the West Indies, Barbados and founding editor of The International Journal of Education and Development Using ICT.

The roundtable on “Wired Schools: Is High Internet Cost the Only Obstacle?” features Sandra Aluoch, manager of the ICT department at the African Virtual University (AVU), Nairobi, Kenya, responsible for the management of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa bandwidth consortium; and Enrique Peláez, founding Executive Director of CEDIA (Ecuadorian Consortium for Advanced Internet Development). Excerpts from the 2006 International Investment Forum for Private Higher Education held in Washington, D.C. in February 2006 are also featured, including a special half-day pre-forum event titled "Innovative Schooling" about computer-assisted delivery.

The report follows the recent launch of an Open Educational Resources portal and community by the Development Gateway, announced at WSIS in November 2005 and supported by the Hewlett Foundation. The Development Gateway has also entered into a partnership with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt (the new “Library of Alexandria”) to launch an all-Arabic knowledge-sharing portal by the third quarter of 2006.

The Development Gateway’s associate Country Gateways are also involved in e-learning initiatives, and the report highlights the work of Vietnam’s VnDG Campus 21, supported by Germany’s InWEnt, the Rwanda Development Gateway Group, supported by Rwanda’s Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Scientific Research; and Portal Uruguay de Desarrollo.

The Development Gateway Foundation is an ICT initiative that was launched by the World Bank and became an independent, non-profit organization in 2001. Putting the Internet to work for the benefit of people in developing countries, the foundation provides innovative, web-based solutions for effective aid and e-government – increasing access to critical information, building local capacity and bringing partners together for positive change.