making good use of educational technology

Making good use of educational technology

Jo o Batista Aratijo e Oliveira

The promise

Although it is not very easy to establish a precise date when the word 'educational technology' gained currency throughout the world, a few landmarks can help us to make a long story short.

The early 195os witnessed enormous scientific and technological developments which ren- dered the existing audio-visuals out-dated or less prestigious tools. Skinner's programmed instruction and developments in behavioural psychology (such as Fred Keller's instructional contracts) also paved the way for the great transformations of the 196os.

The late I95OS and early 196os were influ- enced not only by the importance given to technology in general but also by the development orientation of the economies of poor countries throughout the world.

Associated with the faith in planning, technology and economic development were the first promises concerning the role to be played by the mass media and instructional technology. A meeting at the East-West Center in 1964, reported by Lerner and Schramm (I972), is a good example of the prevalent optimistic mood.

Progress made in the technologies associated

Io]o Batista Arafljo e Oliveira (Brazil). Professor of organizational sociology and education. He has written a number of papers and has participated in several evaluation and consultancy projects in many countries, in the field of educational technology. He directs research for A B T (Associag?~o BrasiMra de Tecnologia Educacional) and is in charge of a distance-learning project at the postgraduate level in Brazil

with academic interests sponsored by funding agencies, particularly USAID, quickly contributed to the start of a more or less organized concern with the testing and diffusion of educational technology programmes in the Third World. According to a European view of such developments (Young et al., 198o, p. I9),

an alliance between the Stanford Institute for Com- munication Research, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Association of Educational Broadcasters acted as the imperialists of the US educational television. They argued that large-scale television projects could bring about dramatic improvements in education for the third world . . . . the Ford Foundation poured in large sums and concluded, by I965, that the claim of television to teach as effectively as an ordinary teacher was so well established that no more research funds were needed.

The Academy for Educational Development was the single most influential agency in the pro- motion and diffusion of new ideas, besides AID itself. The academy's Handbook of Educational

Technology (1971 ) is an excellent example of the mapping of the new territory: in it are defined what the field is about, what the ingredients for success are and, furthermore, what are the best examples to look at. The more circumspect work by Schramm (1973) also proclaims the great accomplishments and promises of projects undertaken in E1 Salvador, American Samoa, Niger and the Ivory Coast.

More conceptual and doctrinal materials were disseminated, and optimistic tones can be found in the collection of papers prepared for the Report by the Commission on Instructional Technology, edited by Tickton in 197o. The

Prospects~ Vol. X I I , No. 3, I9 8z

336 Joao Batista Araf~jo e Oliveira

promises are that technology can: (a) make education more productive; (b) give instruction a more scientific base; (c) make education more individual; (d) make instruction more powerful; (e) make learning more immediate; and (f) make access to education more equal.

Such claims were frequently associated with abundant loans from international agencies, and Unesco quickly became interested in the subject. European participation in co-operatiun with the Third World was also associated with the new libertarian movements in Africa (particularly concerning the activities of the British and French Governments), where many newly independent states were 'enthusiastically searching for new solutions. With the winning of independence they wanted also to banish ignorance and illiteracy' (Young et al., I98O, p. 2o).

Thus, big hopes became associated with big promises to such an extent that as early as I97 o the director of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) said (OECD, I97 r, p. r9):

In a period when technology has performed such wonders, it is perhaps to be expected that ~educational technology' has the magic appeal of a solution to the crowded classrooms, shortages of teachers, continuing education for adults, and so on. The simple lesson of this report is that there is no technological miracle in education.

The early I97os saw the inauguration of major undertakings heavily financed and man- aged through complicated international and bilateral arrangements. The Ivory Coast is a typical example of such large-scale projects, even though it did not serve the exemplary function for which it was launched.

The prospects of utilizing even heavier technologies, such as satellites, started in I967, during a seminar held at Stanford University. The result was the publication of the ASCEND Report (z967), a planning exercise for country- wide media-based educational systems for primary school plus teacher-training projected for four countries, which included Brazil, India and Indonesia. This was more than an academic exercise, and in fact India's SITE project

and Brazil's SACI experiment were quickly developed and gained a good reputation and wide coverage.

Major educational reform programmes were also associated with big hopes for the role of technology, and, besides the projects already mentioned, E1 Salvador is a good example of the kind of intervention precognized and prac-

!tised, with plenty of faith in the media and heavy support from foreign experts.

Inside the developed countries, educational technology has also seen some interesting de-

I velopments, but not associated with such prom- ] ises, except perhaps in a few instances in the United States. However, a major undertaking gave educational television, in particular, the legitimacy it needed to gain worldwide recog- nition: this was Sesame Street. The programme was designed and intended to be the symbol of the new potential of educational television, and it was shortly declared that it had met its goals, if not surpassed them.

With a greater or lesser degree of optimism and good faith (and in a context in which educational technology was associated with the myth of technological salvation, strong centralized economic planning, and nearly un- limited belief in the possibilities of overcoming underdevelopment and other social injustices and inequalities), this new movement was introduced and diffused in most countries in different degrees and for various purposes.

Educational technology, in its various forms, has been used to improve teaching at prestigious universities such as Cambridge as well as for literacy programmes. It was used, among other ends, to improve the communication skills of various groups and communities; to offer medi- cal services to Eskimos; to improve agricultural practices in many places; to support health, nutrition and population-control campaigns, and projects in a number of countries; to train people in industry; to offer distance learning to serve both formal and non-formal levels of different educational systems; to link (via satellite, microwave or otherwise) higher education institutions; to upgrade the competence of teachers; to implement new information and

Making good use of educational technology 337

communication systems; to attack mass education problems; and m help implement massive educational reforms in primary education.

Actions and results

The present article does not attempt to evaluate the overall effects of such undertakings: this has been done partially elsewhere, and it would be a difficult task to group such a diversity of cases, pilot projects, campaigns, experiments, and mass-scale interventions under a single and comprehensive umbrella.

What the foregoing analysis attempts to discuss are the difficulties and shortcomings associated with the strategies utilized in the implementation of educational-technology projects. The positive aspects and the merits of educational technology, as well as the untapped potential of the new media, are analysed in other articles of the present issue of Prospects, and they cannot be ignored. Over twenty years of massive implementation of projects and research on the subject has provided researchers and decision- makers with a large body of solid information and guidance for future action. However, changes in contexts and alternative views of positive and negative aspects can also help to strike a more balanced view and interpretation of what is going on in the field, and of the limits to be associated with our expectations.

Given a fairly high use of hardware compo- nents and large-scale interventions, educational technology projects often cost several million dollars, which have to be spent both in national and foreign currencies.

Some projects have also provoked change in the power structures of institutions, including national ministries of education and communications: in a few cases, institutes of education technology were created; in some, a strong media-based (television, radio or correspon- dence) organization was set up to implement a new project; in other cases, particularly with the open colleges and open universities, new institutions were formed to compete or collaborate with, or replace, other organizations.

Such changes, more or less abrupt, were also accompanied, in a few countries, by a new view of the processes of policy-formulation, decision-making and resource-allocation. Thus, old-time educationists, psychologists and gener- alists were replaced by economists and a new breed of planners. In some cases the new- comers spoke a language foreign to their colleagues, and tried to change the entire (traditional) social structure of decision-making, curriculum-planning and delivery system of the educational sector. More often than not, such attempts favoured centralized approaches and the general conception of top-down educational planning typical of technocrats. The success and failure of such attempts have yet to be appraised, as they vary from country to country.

Educational technologies also brought new connections between developing and developed countries. In a few cases, old colonialist patterns were simply reinforced, in others they were broken. Self-reliance was more talked about than practised; this was due particularly to the international pattern of financing and the long-lasting effects of training abroad (Weiler, x978).

Many things happened because of influences outside the strict 'educational' segment: in particular, strong pressures came from equipment sellers. In some countries the interest of telecommunication agencies and even security agencies has also prompted support for or motivation to mass-education activities. To assess the results and impact of such actions requires a multi-dimensional perspective and a sense of the broader social and political framework within which they were introduced.

Some countries had projects (and succeeded, like Cuba, for instance) to overcome illiteracy in a limited period of time; others, to support changes in the ideology of success and com- munity work (like the United Republic of Tanzania), or in the communication of farming skills (Jamison and McAnany, x98o) or health practices. Most countries used technology to solve problems related to the shortage of quali- fied teachers (Brazil, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Samoa), to extend primary or secondary edu-

338 yo~o Batista Araftjo e Oliveira

cation to masses of urban or rural students (Schramm, 1973, Young et al., x98o) or to meet several such objectives at once. Quite often the educational-reform programmes or other social interventions were associated with developments in the also underdeveloped or non existent communications sector (Ivory Coast, Mexico, Sierra Leone, etc.).

It is true that much good has been done, in various degrees, and to different clienteles. In some cases it is not easy to attribute results uniquely to educational intervention or to the role of the media, given the complementary role of such instruments within the broader socio- economic framework. In some cases, bureaucrats (national or international) won the game and made their offices more powerful and influential; in others, new projects provided a chance for corrupt practices; in a few, sellers of technology, planning systems and equipment got the best share; in some instances, researchers, evaluators and scholars took advantage of situations (and funding) to collect their data and test their methodologies, theories or preferred approaches. It is also possible that quite a few people travelled abroad more than they needed to, that useless or inadequate equipment has been obtained, that inadequate buildings have been built, that traditional and time-tested ways of doing things have been unduly replaced, that competent professionals have had their careers destroyed because they opposed some innovations or did not master new bibles, new dogmas, or even new techniques and vocabularies, which turned out to be current.

Education and communication-technology projects have probably also averted the occur- rence of other problems. Several instances can be evoked in which the demand for school places was at such a high level and teacher- training opportunities were in such short supply that technologies were the only short-term solution (the cases of Teleprimaria and Tele- secundaria in Mexico, El Salvador, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, for example). In other cases, technical or developmental needs could only be met by quickly mobilizing and training people

(most of the campaigns are cited in the literature already referred to above).

As in many other human undertakings, projects meet some of their objectives, accomplish others which were not planned, fail to corre- spond to a few others and, sometimes, create new situations, desired or not. At other times, things that happen at the same time are attributed to the project, and become part of their fate.

Defining success

Success can be measured in several ways: student gains; learning gains; teacher training; modernization and updating of curricula; im- provement of communication networks; more access to one- or two-way communication and information services; participative planning; im- provement in farming practices and/or agricultural output; cost/effectiveness, efficiency, timing, etc.

There are a few cases of obvious spectacular failure, which have not been referred to as such, mostly for political and face-saving reasons. These cases, were it possible to have them openly discussed, would constitute very rich material for the enlightenment and learning of future planners and project directors. In a few cases, besides, or independent of, political reasons, failure was not duly appreciated due to evaluators' naivety of funding-agency constraints. One such case, in Brazil, relates to a profoundly ill-conceived nationwide tele- education system, which inadequately attempted to solve so many problems at the same time that it never got off the ground (McAnany and Oliveira, 198o; Santos, I98O ). Other cases, which will not be mentioned by name, will be treated later as examples embedded in the arguments that follow. Even in such cases, failure is not usually attributed to a project: it would embarrass officials, it would force people in funding agencies to recognize that wrong decisions had been taken, it would complicate many people's lives. However, such instances are not unfamiliar to researchers and evaluators


who meet regularly at seminars and on other occasions, and such unwritten knowledge is seldom communicated to practitioners.

The definition of success is an interesting matter. Projects become famous because of their merits (training teachers, increasing learning gains, helping to implement educational reforms and such like criteria). In the early I97os, most projects became famous even in the absence of hard data: projects were successful because they were important, relevant, large, well funded, well planned, well meant, etc. It is not irrelevant to stress that the acquisition of reputation was not only important for the project's actual functioning, as for the financing of future projects and the direction of attention of planners and evaluators who started working in the early I97OS.

In spite of the remarkable accomplishments of these large projects and of other less ambitious ones, it remains clear that education and communication technologies never did accomplish, at any one time, the great promises and expectations of the I96os.

Partial successes and differential benefits are the most typical results. In no country have general mass-educational problems been solved, even though they have been controlled or tackled in new ways, as already exemplified. Farmers have not systematically or dramatically changed their life-styles or levels of income, even though in some cases local successes can be claimed. The average level of teacher-training and teacher-competence in developing countries has not changed substantially, in spite of local- ized efforts and particular progress made in a few cases. The amount of money spent on the poorer students has not reversed any known pattern of income distribution, even though in certain countries the absolute amount of money spent on marginal, rural and underprivileged populations has increased, and the relative wealth of the poor has increased as a part of a broader change in structural patterns in the economy. The same can be said of the relevance of the curricula, the 'quality' of the education received, the level of participatory planning, the level of democratization and access to

information, and so on. (Good examples of successes and evaluations of several kinds can be found in the directory contained in Young et al. (I98o); Perraton (x98z); Lerner and Schramm (I976); Jamison and McAnany (I98o), as well as in Unesco publications dealing with the cost-effectiveness of educational media.)

I t is obvious that educational technology cannot be judged by the extent to which it did not fulfil vaguely stated and optimistically interpreted promises. I t could best be appraised by its specific results and the prospects it offers of contributing to educational development and social change. However, as optimistic as we must be about the benefits obtained so far--given the huge educational and communication problems and challenges lying ahead of us--it is not easy to learn from past experience.

Ambiguity in evaluation

Why is it so difficult to disentangle the net resuks of such huge verbal, financial, intellectual and managerial efforts in such a field? Besides technical and methodological matters associated with research and evaluation practices, there are at least four questions which make it difficult to define with certainty the net effect of social interventions in general, and educational technology practices in particular. They are related to the logic of decision-making and to the logic or art of interpreting reality.

First, it is not clear, in most interventions, exactly what happened. An agricultural-intervention project can be seen by governments and funding agencies as an enormous help to farmers. This same project can be seen by other analysts as just another strategy of social control and maintenance of the status quo. One evaluation (or project statement, in the absence of rigorous evaluation) can pinpoint the absolute levels of productivity deriving from a project, while a critic can demonstrate that net gains diminished because farmers had to adopt more costly practices, buy fertilizers and acquire debts, as the result of the same project. This was the case, for instance, of

34 ~ Yoao Batista Ara~tjo e Oliveira

the INVIERNO project in Somoza's Nicaragua (O'Sullivan, I978). The eyes of the beholder, the benefit of doubt, the need for self-justifieation or the limitation of scope in a given 'serious and experimental' study simplify reality to such an extent that it is not always the case that people can agree about what happened-often the direct opposite is the case.

Second, people do not always agree on the reasons for what happened. The weak links of causality in any effort of major social change are often difficult to establish. Learning gains could also be attributed to Hawthorne effects, diffuse motivational causes, accidental changes in technology, bias in the experimental or comparative group, improvements in factors other than the ones embedded in the technology, and so on. Technologies that increase student learning can also be seen as causing or being associated with maintaining lower levels of teacher-training, teachers' salaries, etc. Technical modernization can be alternatively interpreted as subtle (or obvious) ways of perpetuating social injustices. This also explains why similar interventions pro- duce different results, even in similar contexts. There is not enough comparable rednndance surrounding the tests of effective implementation of medium- and large-scale technology projects, in the fields of communication and education. Additionally, alternative causes could also have led to this same result: instead of spending money on equipment and centralized planning, a few changes in teachers' salaries or textbooks or other school resources could have (probably) accomplished similar results. The ECIEL studies (Schiefelbein and Simmons, I98o) and some research evidence reviewed by the World Bank about textbook effectiveness (Heyneman, z98o) are good examples of what 'little media' can accomplish~ without overly disrupting an ongoing educational system. Managerial styles could also cause similar effects. Changes in societal or local conditions could also be conducive to the desired (or obtained) changes.

A third and more difficult issue to face in evaluating the net effect of educational technology interventions is the issue of success.

Assuming (as economists often like or have to do, in the absence of evidence or better tools) that what seems to have happened has really happened, and that what happened has happened because of a given set of variables (a project or intervention, or aspects of it), then comes the next question: Was it good or bad? Several answers emerge. Some people tend to profess the belief that ff something that was planned has in fact happened it is a mark of success. Accountants and certain economists and planners tend to subscribe to such views. Governments also like to talk about targeted goals and percentages of goal accomplishment. Projects that meet their stated (or revised) objectives are good.

Others like to question the nature of the goals themselves: Were the objectives 'good' to start with? Are they still good/valid when the project is being implemented? Or is over? A few others go beyond such questions and ask: Good for whom? Who benefited more from such a project, or in which ways did different groups benefit?

In between, researchers and most often, evaluators, prefer to ask different questions to settle the issue of success in relation to the previous situation to other alternatives (in terms of costs, benefits, feasibility, etc.).

Planners, particularly from funding agencies, and decision-makers consistently prefer the easy way out: projects are successful because they exist, their goals make them noble (in spite of what happens, in many eases; that approach also explains, in part, why evaluation is so often avoided).

Finally, a question tess often asked is also a logical barrier to the understanding of the reality surrounding us, thus limiting our ability to appreciate fully the net effects of educational technologies. The question is whether it was better that some things did not happen. The question helps both to evaluate what bad things educational/commnnications technology projects helped to avoid happening (social pressures, higher costs, etc.) as well as some aspects in the projects that were not implemented, and thank God, they did not happen.

There is no solution or easy way out of such

Making good use of educational technology 34I

matters, and there is thus no simple answer to the questions of whether education/communication technology is worth its costs or whether it fulfilled its promises. Answers to why such technologies have not solved problems to the extent expected or advertised, and the circumstances in which they have succeeded or can succeed, will be dealt with in the following section.

Making the most of technologies for education

WHAT IS THE CONTEXT?

In many applications of educational technology-as is usual with other kinds of technologies as wellmthe solution preceded the problem. The flow of technology transfer does not always start with a problem, but often with some technology presented by a seller, an international funding agency, a minister of education or communications becoming charmed with some sophisticated demonstration he has seen abroad or other more subtle forms of generating needs.

The British Open University presents a case in which the understanding of the social context, besides the appreciation of specific projects' results, is important for comparative purposes. In particular, there are three underlying charac- teristics of the British social system incorporated by the Open University which contribute to its development and success. First, the country has already had good experiences with distance teaching, and the postal services and other necessary infrastructural elements were already in existence. Second, access to the universities in the United Kingdom is extremely restricted by highly selective rules which operate throughout the previous educational years. Most people simply cannot be enrolled because of their past grades. In most countries there is no such restriction. In the case of the United Kingdom, it means that the Open University is likely to enrol many students with a reasonable educational background. Third, Open University

standards are primarily the same standards that apply to universities: the peers of Open Uni- versity professors and course developers are the outstanding scientists and professors of the British university system. Peer rating, peer review of materials developed contribute to the high standards of the institution and its materials, and represent strong forces against academic deterioration of staff. This combination of circumstances is seldom to be found in other countries that are developing open universities and colleges, and an appreciation of their potential and their results have to take the context into account.

In many cases of the introduction of educational technology, contextual factors have not been duly appreciated, so it is no wonder that so many projects fall short of their goals. Nice as it might be for a budget-concerned educational planner, a concept such as a 'teacher- proof instructional material' will certainly en- counter profound resistance from any self- respecting teacher in any country. Sophisticated planning techniques for determining school sites, cost-efficient as they might be in the economist's eye, will face major resistance from politicians concerned with their constituencies and personally related to those who will have to travel four or five additional kilometres in order to meet a technocrat's goal! Contextual factors such as authoritarianism, sex roles, ritual functions of the educational system, individu- alism or group-based orientation and the like are likely to constitute important constraints in any major change, and therefore should be carefully taken into account. Failure to do so is usually associated with excessive faith in centralized planning, in the role of plans and in the kingdom of reason, rigid implementation and lack of a due appreciation of the contradictions of reality.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Educational problems are easy to find but not so simple to define. They are many, varied and obvious: people ought to be educated; schools

342 yo?zo Batista Ara~jo e Oli~dra

and media help to educate people; farmers and peasants need more information; populations ought to know how to limit their own growth; poor children must master survival skills; and so on. Anyone could easily draw a national plan of goals and derive its priorities in a short period of time.

Moreover, educational goals are often stated in comparison with other countries' educational systems. In part this is how innovation and modernization occurs, in part it is an expression of the phenomenon of rising expectations. Any- where, education is supposed to help a country's development, and more is generally considered better.

Imitation is also another social way of defining a national agenda. International agencies play a very important role in this regard. A decade for literacy, a year for the handicapped, and so on. After independence, countries start defining (in very similar ways) their educational needs (and they look very much like the systems of the countries they are trying to liberate themselves from). Colour television is another example of such decision-modes. And not only that: educational problems are much more complex than many other social and developmental goals. It is not easy: (a) to balance the desire for national unity with the wish to strengthen regional identity; (b) to reconcile free flow of information with strict developmental goals or national security policies; or (c) to select uni- form goals and standards while respecting a group's self-determination and autonomy.

Technologies, in general, concentrate their thrusts on maximizing unidimensional aspects of a reality (system-oriented technologists would strongly disagree, but they are an exception), educational technology interventions used to follow the same pattern. In a few countries a sponsor's desire to have a well-planned project ruled out local participation in the higher echelons of decision-making. In others, the desire to modernize schools left little room for tradition and other forms of cultural expression. Technology-oriented problem definition seldom allows for a broader view of a given reality, its history and social constraints. That is why

much intervention is efficient, in the short term, but ineffective and unfeasible, in the long term. The maths project in Nicaragua, successful according to pedagogic standards, faced tremendous difficulties in amalgamating with the day-to-day operations of the school system: an educational problem is not only improving maths skills, but doing it within some context (or changing the context!).

Besides, problems in the real world, and in the world of educational technology in particular, are not separated from their solutions: they often come and go together. Problems arise or emerge when solutions are ready; problems are singled out for solution when a new technology becomes imperative, mandatory or even attrac- tive to a minister's eye.

A more important and often more disregarded issue in problem definition is the ownership of a problem and the organizational set-up to deal with it. Opening an open university in a country will be conceived as a different problem by an existing university, a ministry-of-education agency, an educational media organization, or a new institution. When the Indian SITE project was born, its association with All-India Radio--an organization based on the British BBC--defmed, by this sheer fact, several patterns of defining problems and dealing with them.

Thus, the history of many interventions, as the history of decision-making itself, illustrates how difficult it is, in the world of education, to select the right problems, or to select problems in independent ways: independent of vested interests, technological options, organizational bias and specialization, ready-made solutions, and so on. A few topical educational problems exist, and to the extent that they approach a less multi-dimensional scale of complexity they are likely to be best served by educational technologies.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

This question has received more attention than the previous one, even if it is true that the search


for alternatives has been quite limited in most projects of educational reform and introduction of education/communication technologies. The same is true in the world of business management, and there is nothing structurally wrong with that.

A very important contribution of economists, planners and practitioners in the field of education/communications technology is the notion of thinking about costs and alternative ways of spending money. A very useful distinction is the concept of capital versus recurrent prices. Poli- ticians and decision-makers are often rewarded by underestimating recurrent costs: that will be after election, and nobody will be around to relate future costs to today's decisions.

Other real-world constraints also conspire against thorough problem analysis: interest groups, conflicting viewpoints, institutional stakes, opportunities of getting a loan, financial, political and electoral pressures, absence of a carefully thought-out problem. Sometimes it is also a lack of humility, or being too inexperi- enced to admit that because a problem exists, it does not mean that a solution must also exist; or, for that matter, that education or technology are the solutions. The late I97os, if not earlier, have already pointed to the limits of faith in technology and even education as the solution to mankind's equity and welfare problems.

Searches for solutions are also limited by the very nature of the planning process: good planning makes history. Talking about future conditions is safe only when it is based on past experience. The safer it is, the more unlikely it is to be correct. Good planning is only possible retrospectively, and only recently have the world of educational technology and the technological constraints of communication systems paid any attention to the flexibility needed for adaptation during the phases of implementation.

A common assumption in this field, particularly in the past decade, has been that something (some solution or technology) that has worked once will work again. (Two British institutions, the International Extension Col- lege and the Open University, appear to be

exceptions, given their genuine concern with the problem of technology transfer.) One mini- mizes contexts, history, interorganizational arrangements, and, in particular, human resources. Good technological thinking and the management of truly technological projects can be accomplished only through developed minds. Not enough appreciation is normally given to the adequate preparation of human resources which absorb or adapt a new technology: technologies that were meant to bring in flexibility, when the right people to deal with them existed, can lead to rigidity when similar contexts and adequate personnel are missing: such is the history of many failures of technology transfer in education.

Investing in problem implementation

As mentioned above, much less attention is given to locating problems than is given to problem solving (even though the constraints conspire against the exercise of reason), and implementation is left as a minor problem.

Project results and outputs show, if anything, that running a project in the real world is the main challenge: actions meet reality, and they either adapt to each other or the project goes astray (alone with the people running it, in many cases).

The more scarce the resources, the more the real planning is enacted in the making. And such is commonly the case of projects undertaken in poor countries, or poorly funded ones in richer countries.

A key factor in project success is a careful look into interinstitutional arrangements, which is often needed in more complex operations. The design of interacting organizations, the issues of power, control, evaluation, funding and budgeting become key factors in predicting and obtaining the desired outputs. As happens with contexts, often they cannot be controlled, and have to be accepted as such, to be co-opted, to be served or to be expeUed. Many projects had to set up and run their own infrastructure,

344 Joao Batista Araf~jo e Oliveira

as they became unsuited to interinstitutional collaboration.

The right or adequate kind of organizational arrangement is vital to whatever can be implemented and learnt from reality: extremely rigid and formal agreements and management techniques can hinder the way the real world will be perceived at headquarters. A need to succeed (and the impossibility of failing or losing face or prestige) can perpetuate inadequate (costly, ineffective, conflict-raising) practices and even falsify results, to say nothing of the dozens of evaluation and feedback reports carefully hidden in bosses' desks throughout the developed and underdeveloped worlds.

A competent operation--either in an extremely centralized project or one in which power is concentrated at the periphery--requires a very careful organizational design, in which the key aspects related to a project's success can quickly, easily and honestly be reported to the person in charge. This is one of the reasons why many official reports of projects of educational technology have not much to do with their reality, as seen from the outside.

Leadership is obviously a key issue. The time is past--in many countries at least--when history was thought of and taught as the cult of heroes. The short history of educational technology has fallen many times into the old trap: El Salvador would not have been possible without Benecke, SITE without Sarabhai, and so on, including so many unidentifiable managers and less celebrated field-officers and consultants. People are important; of course, leaders, gurus, project inspirators, managers, are also important and there will often be characters to fill in the gaps (a few cases could perhaps be traced in which the absence of personalities contributed to chaos). But people in a project's life are important in many other ways.

First, educational-technology projects, to succeed in any meaningful educational way, have to take a 'project's target population' more seriously. Counting people's heads, running a few questionnaires or interviewing a few com- munity representatives will never replace the genuine interest of an educator (an agent of

change by definition) in the subjects (and not the objects) of a given intervention. In particular, many mass-education, technology-based educational packages and interventions have mini- mized the function of motivation and the per- sonal relationships with the source of knowledge. Much attention must be given, then, to a project's main raison d'gtre, i f an educational project worthy of the name is to be successful. Otherwise, projects can be effective, people can be indoctrinated, perhaps trained, but probably not 'educated' in any respected meaning of the word.

Second, special consideration must be given to the role of people in the relations of technology transfer. The usual pattern which can be traced in many projects is of a totally assymetrical relation between the 'owners' of the technology and the 'recipients'; the ones who know and the ones who are going to learn, etc. No real transfer and assimilation is possible without competent people, a require- ment that is more important when the technologies are complex. No wonder technology transfer leads to technological dependence, in many cases: one imports problems, viewpoints, solutions, etc., regardless of one's own problems, viewpoint and conditions.

In fact, much of the cost borne (directly or indirectly) by many countries (and institutions) in acquiring educational technologies could have been avoided had they appropriately in- vested in staff recruitment and training.

After so many years of experience and inter- action, it can now be understood that the only way to transfer technology is through people's minds; buying equipment, importing sophisticated plans and solutions, building complex facilities should be undertaken only after a solid investment in brain-power. Local brain-power, in principle, is more able to understand local contexts, constraints and limits to change. Lo- cal brains, duly educated anthropologically to understand their own and other cultures (and viewpoints) are certainly the best vehicles to absorb innovations in an institution or a country. It may not be as prestigious or as glamorous as having some foreigners around,


but it is likely to be more effective in the long run.

Where most of the failures lie

It is easier to fail than to succeed in such a complex world as that of education. It is also easier to detect (and analyse) the failures than to make a project work.

In the business of educational technology, one must beware of promises and of the gran- diose. Promises have been un_fillfilled mostly because it has been impossible to meet them.

The first mistake is to consider education, and educational technology in isolation, as 'independent' variables. The world of education and the place of education in the social context is much more complex. Children do not learn, or do not learn enough, or do not learn well not only because teachers are underpaid, lazy and/or incompetent: they also do not learn because school is not telling them anything relevant; because school (alone, at least) is not going to affect their lives in any meaningfial way, because they are hungry (in many countries, including large parts of my own, the ninth economic power of the Western World); because the educational system (which is not the educational planner's or the educational technologist's fault) is structured in such a way as to perpetuate injustices, regardless of methods used or technologies introduced. One cannot operate mir- acles in politics and economics solely from the educational sector, much less with educational technology weapons alone.

The second mistake is to import unfamiliar ways of defining and dealing with problems. In particular, to import the need to solve im- mediately large problems which require complex structures far beyond a country's experience. Complex projects are fine for those who need to test the use of computers and simu- lators or to test wonderfully complex interorganizational theories, etc., but not always good for organizations and countries used to treating problems in more discrete units.

The point is not that because problems are

too big and complex they should be disregarded. Rather it is because problems are complex, they need to be approached in ways familiar to those dealing with their solution. It may take time, but it is the only way out. Otherwise--as we have seen in many cases of introduction of mass media--the locals will be left out of major decisions affecting not only their careers, but a society's life. Hasty funding- agency timetables should not replace the necessary time-lag for local people to master the requirements of project management and control. Such constraints suggest quite different attitudes and approaches for technical assistance and for the difficult role of consultants.

The third mistake is to treat technology lightly. Technologies make revolutions. Engin- eering and managerial technologies, as well as information systems technologies, are deeply associated with revolutions in the structure of economies and social systems. Technology is a very serious thing, a very important part of modern life in many respects, and an extremely powerful tool. Decision-makers, educational planners and educational technologists might well pay tribute to the industrial origins of the term, and make efforts to understand the hard thinking behind the concept. Having done so, they will certainly be in a much better position than former colleagues to appreciate whether a new idea, solution or tool is really a technology, whether or not it fits a given context or objec- tive, and what is the price to be paid, in case it gets adopted.

What is left?

The I98OS present difficult challenges to the shapers of the generation who will be living in the twenty-first century. We no longer have the right to be naive about vague promises. We no longer have the right to believe that technologies per se--as sophisticated as they might be--will be able to straighten out complex and difficult situations. We are not entitled to simplify complex problems merely by using sophisticated technologies.

346 yo~o Batista Arafijo e Oliveira

The next few years are likely to present new challenges. It will be not surprising i f a few countries launch satellites and use them for educational purposes; projects involving millions o f people, such as China's proposed open university, may not be confined to that country. Colour television is being expanded, electronic blackboards reach remote villages, digital computers become commonplace in a few selected classrooms.

Yet, in spite of such tremendous developments, much remains to be done in many respects. Expectations must be brought closer to reality. Unidimensional solutions can only solve, if at all, specific, unidimensional problems. While some countries need skilled labour at various levels of training, they also need creative minds and open-minded leaders. Not all educational projects conceived for the masses give youth the opportunities to rehearse important skills needed to master the coming, and yet unknown, curricula of the next century.

Managerial technologies are not always as developed as the hard technologies they are supposed to manage, and much effort has to be directed to this aspect.

The experiences of the last two decades, our ability to accept partial success and our willing- ness not to despair in the face of chaos should be enough encouragement for those really com- mitted to education, even when we no longer believe in the limitless benefits of new technologies. []

References ASCEND. I967. Advanced Satellite Communication for

Education in National Development. Stanford, Calif., Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford Uni- versity.

ACADEMY FOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOP/~NT. 197I. Handbook of Educational Technology. Washington~ D.C., Academy for Educational Development.

HEYNEMAN, S. P. I98o. Textbooks and Achievement: What We Know. Washington, D.C., World Bank. (Staff Working Paper, No. 298.)

JAMISON, Dean; MCANANY, l~mile. I980. Radio for Education and Development. Beverly Hills, Calif.~ Sage Publications.

LERI,rI~R, Daniel; SCHRAMM, Wilbur. I972. Communication and Change in the Developing Countries. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii.

�9 I976. Communication and Change: The Last Ten Years--and the Next. Honolulu, The University Press of Hawaii�9

McANA~rY, l~mile; OLXVUIRA, Jo~o B. A. !98o. The SACI/EXERN Project in Brazil: An Analytical Case- Study. Paris, Unesco. (Reports and Papers on Mass Communication, 89.)

OECD. I97I. Educational Technology: The Design and Implementation of Learning Systems. Paris, OECD] CERI.

O'SIrLLIVA/q, ]'. I978- INVIERNO: A Mission Report Submitted to AED. Washington, D.C., Academy for Educational Development. (Mime,.)

PBRRATO~r, Hilary (ed.). !982. Alternative Routes to Non- formal Education. Distance Teaching for School Equiv- alency. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

SANTOS, Laymert Garcia. r98o. Les dEr~glements de la rationalit& t~tude sur la demarche systfmique du Projet SACI/EXERN. (Thesis presented at the Uni- versity of Paris-VII.)

SCHIEFELBEII'ff, Ernest,; SIMMONS, John. I98o. Os determJ- nantes do desempenho escolar: urea revise, de pesquisas nos paises em desenvolvimento. Cadernos de Pesqulsa~ Vol. 35, PP. 53"-7I.

SCrmAMM, Wilbur. I973. Big Media--Little Media, Chapter V. Washington, D.C., ICIT/Academy for Educational Development.

YOtrNG, Michael; PI~RRATON, Hilary; Jg~INS, Janet; DODDS, Tony. x98o. Distance Teaching for the Third World. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

WEIL~R, Hans N. I978. Discovery and Dependence: The Uneasy Relationship between American Universities and the Third World. Keynote address prepared for the Western Regional Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society. Los Angeles. (Mime,.)

making good use of educational technology

Documents