We at SSG Advisors are currently incubating a new approach to the delivery of higher education services that leverages both new technology and disruptive business models. We presented this model at last week's eLearning Technology Salon and I am very grateful for all of the thoughtful and useful input received

The Salon was a great chance to get very practical advice from leading experts in the fields of both education and ICT4D. Here are key points I raised in my opening remarks and input received from participants:

Why we're exploring eLearning solutions

• Skyrocketing Demand for Higher Education. Demand for higher education is expected to rise from 48 million seats in 1990 to 159 million seats by 2025 in Asia and Africa.
• Emergence of Affordable and Appropriate Technologies. Low-cost netbooks and Nettop PCs and the proliferation of broadband and 3G networks transform the economics of providing access to e-learning solutions.
• Potential for Disruptive Business Models. Over the last several years, SSG has developed some innovative business models for delivering broadband sustainably in rural areas of developing countries, like SSG's experience with the USAID Last Mile Initiative in Sri Lanka.

A disruptive business model for eLearning

Based on that experience, I put forward the idea of a disruptive business model for higher education delivery that had 3 characteristics:

1. A key element of the business model is the idea of moving away from per credit hour tuition and towards a monthly subscription fee. Monthly subscription fee service with 24/7 instructor support available online. Using a subscription fee structure would benefit students by encouraging them to complete coursework as quickly as possible. The availability of instructor support at any time enables students to fit their studies around work, family and other commitments. From a business standpoint, a subscription revenue model also better reflects the cost structure of maintaining a platform that includes instructor support on a 24/7 basis.


2. Both direct and shared access network for users. Here the idea is that better off students in urban/peri-urban areas would be able to access courses from home using a Netbook and a broadband connection. While that might be workable in Rural and lower-income students would have access through a network of franchised shared access centers.


3. Focus on General Education requirements. One way to ensure that such a model does not compete directly with developing country HEIs would be to focus on general education requirement courses rather than creating a degree-conferring program. The idea is that this both reduces costs for the student, who can complete a significant portion of degree-related work before matriculating to a bricks and mortar university and it also expands the number of available university seats. This is the model of straighterline.com and it enables the company to partner with universities and expand their reach rather than directly compete with them.

We received some great feedback from the audience on both the underlying assumptions and the business model itself.

Look at that eLearning idea

The technology of eLearning

On the technology side, it was pointed out that caching or USB sticks may offer an additional cost-saving mechanism for delivery of content in rural areas where the cost of broadband access may still be prohibitive. This makes a lot of sense as it is very easy to upload lectures, text and even exercises on to a USB stick and then rely on broadband connections only for chats, email and discussion boards. Another important point raised was the use of 3G phones (perhaps uploaded off of DVDs) to offer the delivery of lectures so that students can watch lectures while traveling to/from work each day.

I think these are very important points. For this model to work, it needs to be low-cost, but also offer the prospect of a consistent experience. USB drives would allow a student to use an icafe or telecenter PC, but still have the same learning experience as someone using a dedicated netbook. Also, the advantage of having course materials available in a mobile environment (whether through downloads or off of DVDs) is a significant benefit for students who may prefer to listen to a course lecture while riding the bus to work.

Infrastructure for eLearning

We also discussed whether a franchised shared access center was necessary or worth the investment. It was pointed out that the use of USB sticks would allow for a standardized learning environment, irrespective of the machine or its location. In this case, it may be more cost effective to have a distributor-style (or authorized retailer) relationship with existing icafes and telecenters rather than build new franchises. This approach makes a lot of sense in peri-urban areas where there may be fully commercial icafes. In rural areas where no current icafes or telecenters exist (or are too expensive), it may make more sense to have a franchised operation to ensure that rural students can affordably access coursework and materials.

The buyer demand for eLearning

While we assumed that there is a global demand for higher education, it became clear through the discussion that the proposed model may be more appropriate for Asia as opposed to Africa. Asian cultures tend to place a higher value on education so they may be more receptive to this model. Also, as a rule, most Asian countries have a higher teledensity and higher ICT skills base, so technology may be less of an impediment. Another key point is that in Africa there is a tradition of students being paid to attend university - obviously our model depends on a willingness for students and families to pay.

I think these are absolutely critical points and not ones we had considered when including Africa as part of our model. Our experience in this space is largely in South and Southeast Asia, so our assumptions are built on those markets. I do not think this model is viable in countries where there is no tradition (formal or informal) for paying for education services.

Accreditation and eLearning

Another key point in the discussion revolved around the importance of both regulatory and 'market' accreditation. In our model we propose addressing the regulatory accreditation issue through partnerships with national and US universities. With regard to the market accreditation, close relationships with key employers will be critical to success. If the employers feel that students who take courses through our proposed model are well-prepared for the workforce it will greatly increase our model's legitimacy.

It was pointed out that in some professions, eg nursing, there may be a preference for a degree-conferring program with specialized coursework. Here, I think we would need to see what the level of demand actually is. Becoming a degree-conferring institution is a major investment of time and money, so there would have to be a very high level of demand to justify that investment. It would also put our model in direct competition with host country universities, which could create further complications in obtaining the necessary accreditation.

Concluding Thoughts:

The feedback from the Technology Salon has been invaluable as we seek to develop and refine this business model further. I think the input shows we may be on the right track, but we still have quite a ways to go before we have a business model that we can translate into a bankable business plan.

Steve Schmida is the Managing Director at SSG Advisors, a small consulting, training and project management firm.

Young people make up 18 percent of the world's population today, or 1.2 billion in absolute terms. Of these 15-24 year-olds, 87% live in developing countries. At the same time, their basic educational needs are not being met. More than one-third of all youth around the world are not in the classroom - 73% of youth in sub-Saharan Africa and 51% in South and West Asia.

Yet developing world governments cannot expand traditional educational facilitates to these youth or the even larger cohort behind them. Demand for higher education in Asia and Africa will grow from 48 million enrollments in 1990 to 159 million enrollments in 2025, but India spent only 3.2% of GDP in 2005 on education, ranking it 140th of 180 countries tracked by the CIA World Factbook.

Look at that eLearning idea

The inability of developing countries to meet the demand for quality secondary and higher education has a direct impact on economic growth. Researchers at Harvard University estimate that:

"a one-year increase in tertiary education stock would raise the long-run steady-state level of GDP of Africa GDP per capita due to factor inputs by 12.2%."

So improving access to higher education is one of the best investments that donor agencies, foundations, and governments can make. Now what if it were possible to nearly double the number of secondary and university seats in a developing country overnight and with relatively little investment from the public sector?

Steve Schmida, founder of SSG Advisors, believes that eLearning - the provision of educational opportunities via information and communication technologies - could have that kind of scale with recent advances in electronic content creation and the proliferation of technology devices. He's developed ideas around the three main questions eLearning models bring forth:

1. What do these new eLearning pedagogical models look like?
2. How can new business models make eLearning services affordable?
3. Who will validate or accredit eLearning programs?

Join us in a Technology Salon lead by Steve, that will discuss these three questions with the hope to answer a forth: What effect would scaled eLearning in higher education have on economic growth in Africa and Asia?

eLearning's Promise: Will New Models Educate Youth?
March DC Technology Salon
Thursday, March 4, 8:30-10am
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

We'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So the first fifteen (15) to RSVP will be confirmed attendance and then there will be a waitlist.

The Girls and ICT Technology Salon was a great opportunity to get an amazing group of thinkers and do-ers in the same room to debate around a particular topic. I'm Linda Raftree, Plan International West Africa Regional Office, Advisor for New Technology and Social Media. I was honored to lead 20+ people in a conversation revolving around 5 aspects I mentioned in my blog post on Girls and ICTs:

• Tension between participation and protection
• Online behavior is an extension of, and a potential amplifier of offline behavior
• Qualifying the digital divide
• Girls' involvement in developing and designing ICT solutions for their own needs
• Research on Girls and ICTs

My impressions from the Salon on the topics are below. These points and others raised in the Salon were fed into a high level consultation for Plan's upcoming 2010 Because I am a Girl Report (in process).

Does ICT education help girls?

Tension between participation and protection.

The main point here is that ICTs offer girls (and people in general) huge opportunities for increased participation and connection. However, due to the very real problems of on-line child pornography, child trafficking, child harassment, and cyber bullying, there is a strong push by some for more control and more restricted on-line use by children and youth in the name of protecting them.

Girls, however, can participate actively in self-protection if given the opportunity to learn and practice. Teachers and adults can play a role as guides, coaches and support systems for girls to feel comfortable with ICTs and also to help them navigate and protect themselves on-line. Globally, there are differing levels of openness to girls (and children in general) going on-line. In US schools, there seems to be a stronger focus on the dangers of the internet and a bigger resistance to ICT's in education as opposed to many 'developing' countries. Adults in these particular 'developing' countries seem to be less focused on the dangers of the internet and much more aware of the opportunities for connection, advancement, broadened educational opportunities and employment that ICTs represent.

Online behavior is an extension of, and a potential amplifier of offline behavior.

ICTs are not the problem in and of themselves - they reflect existing social issues, existing human behaviors. ICTs become a concern because they can exacerbate negative behaviors, such as bullying, pornography, early sexualization of girls, trafficking, sugar daddies, sexting, etc. Girls, boys, youth shouldn't be banned from using ICT's; they should be supported to learn to navigate these spaces and use them positively. There are examples of safe platforms where children can talk to each other ( eg., a 'sand box' to learn and be safe).

Girls (and boys) who are vulnerable online are usually also vulnerable offline, and this is where any intervention should begin. Life skills and self-confidence are critical, and these need to begin at an early age, before girls and boys even go on-line. There is a need to be aware of the law enforcement agenda which, to stop pedophilia, advises children not to go online, as opposed to preparing them for a lifetime use of ICTs. This can backfire when children go around these controls and don't know how to self-protect. It can subsume the positive aspects of cyberspace and ICTs and create unnecessary fear in parents and other adults. Adult-child communication and cooperation in protection/learning to navigate is critical here and preferable to outright prohibition of Internet access.

Qualifying the digital divide.

We often think about the digital divide in terms of economics, 'developing' vs 'developed' countries, but we need to also consider the gender divide, urban-rural divide, age divide, disability divide. These divides all need to be taken into consideration when working with girls and ICTs, and ICT related programs in general and we need to be quite specific when talking about 'access.' For example, girls working as maids in urban areas vs. girls living in wealthy homes in those same areas may have quite different access levels, though they are both 'urban girls.' We need to talk about the gender divide in terms of males as partners, not just as obstacles to girls' ICT access. ICTs can also be used to positively influence the behavior of men, and men and boys can be participants and partners in programs to support girls' access to ICTs.

Young people tend to be better than their parents and teachers at learning and manipulating new technology. This can be disempowering and threatening for adults. It also means that parents and other adults may be less able to provide support to children who are using ICTs and navigating cyberspace. Institutions that provide different services may need to be retrained to deliver their services for a younger population using mobile phones and internet as their usage grows, to go where young people, where girls are. For example, in Sweden, psychologists are offering services in authorized chat rooms. Children profess to feeling safer there as it gives them anonymity.

There is a perceived divide between the tech sector and the NGO/development sector, and also between the tech sector and the gender sector. It's important to bridge these disconnects for better work in all these sectors.

Girls involvement in developing and designing ICT solutions for their own needs.

It's important to think about whether girls are involved and engaged in voicing their needs and whether those who are designing ICT processes and solutions are listening and involving girls in them. A study in the EU found a difference in how boys and girls use technology by the level of middle school. Girls tend to then use ICTs for social purposes whereas boys think of them in terms of employment. It's suggested that girls need female mentors and role models that use technology and that work in the technology field.

Putting tech in the hands of women, for example, primary school teachers, can increase their status and strength as role models and enable them to carry out different and important roles in the community. To help girls feel more empowered, one program trains exclusively girls as ICT facilitators. The girls then train boys and the rest of the community at a big public community festival. This breaks down barriers and allows girls to take a leading role. A broad and representative range of girls should have a seat at the table to give ideas and input into research and design of technology solutions for their protection and their empowerment. This will make ICT initiatives more successful, relevant and realistic.

Specific research on girls and ICTs.

There is quite a bit of research on girls education. However, there is not a lot of specific research on girls and ICTs in "developing" countries or on the specific impact of a particular ICT or ICT-related process in reaching development objectives. Most of what is there is anecdotal. Funding for Girls and ICTs will likely be dependent on evidence gathered through monitoring and evaluation to prove certain approaches work and to discover the differentiated impact and role of ICTs in the process. It's quite difficult to unpack the impact of a particular technology given the variety of other conditions and elements in an initiative. How can ICT impact or influence be measured as something separate from reaching the broader goals in an initiative? And should it be?

There may be ways that skilled monitoring and evaluation experts can pinpoint whether a particular methodology that involves ICTs did have a greater impact on reaching goals; however, there are many other content variables eg., quality of training provided in the project, location, interest of participants, methodology, etc. that may be more important than the ICTs themselves in terms of impact.

If you'd like to lead a session of the Technology Salon, please email me today!.

In the developing world, girls need new skills and capacities for the 21st Century. They need to have the ability to be flexible, adaptive, and innovative to grow into positions of influence in their communities and countries.

Does ICT education help girls?

Yet - as we learned in the Gender Equality in ICT Education discussion - just getting girls to secondary school is a challenge, and once there, girls often shun ICT's unless they have strong mentors and female role models.

Please join us Thursday, January 28th, as Linda Raftree, Social Media and New Technology Advisor for Plan International's West Africa Regional Office, leads us in a discussion of three pertinent questions:

1. How can the technology and international development communities support the development of girls?
2. What role does ICT play in facilitating girls' growth?
3. And where are the concrete examples that prove ICT is a net positive for female progress?

We'll also try to identify case studies, partners, and further research around girls development and ICT for inclusion in Plan's Girls at the Cutting Edge of Change Report, now underway.

Improving Girls Development with ICT
January Technology Salon
Thursday, January 28, 8:30-10am
UN Foundation Conference Room
1800 Mass Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)

Do note that we'll have hot coffee and Krispe Kreme donuts for a morning rush, but seating is limited and the UN Foundation is in a secure building. So the first fifteen (15) to RSVP will be confirmed attendance and then there will be a waitlist.

Addition January Technology Salon Events

I'm pleased to announce two other events supported by the Technology Salon in January. Each event is organized independently, so contact the respective event sponsors for details:

• NYC Mobile Tech Salon - January 20th
  MobileActive is organizing a conversation in New York City around how mobile phones can empower grassroots NGO's to effect change:
  
  Mobile Campaigning and Tools on a Shoestring
  Wednesday, January 20th, 6-8pm
  Digital Democracy
  109 W 27th Street, 6th floor,
  New York, NY 10001 map)


• USAID Daybreak Discovery - January 27th
  The Business Growth Initiative project of USAID is examining the impact of public-private partnerships in Asian & the Middle East:
  
  Economic Growth Alliances in Asian & the Middle East
  Wednesday, January 27th, 9-11am
  Smith School Business Suite
  Concourse Level, Room C-3
  International Trade Center
  1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
  Washington, DC 20004 (map)

For November, we have a very special Technology Salon. In coordination with the World Bank e-Development Thematic Group and infoDev, we will have a World Bank ICT and Education Community of Practice Discussion on Total Cost of Ownership:

How much does this really cost?

How much does it really cost to introduce and sustain computers in schools? A discussion of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and models of affordable computing for schools in developing countries.

"Total cost of ownership" (TCO) is often underestimated, sometimes grossly, when calculating costs of ICT in education initiatives in developing countries. Estimates of initial costs to purchase equipment to overall costs over time vary widely; typically they lie between 10-25% of total cost. That said, there is a dearth of reliable data, and useful tools, to help guide education decision makers in their assessments of the true costs of educational technology initiatives.

A recent whitepaper from Vital Wave Consulting, "Affordable Computing for Schools in Developing Countries: A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model for Education Officials", and accompanying case study of ICT in education initiatives in India, provide further insight and perspective on this important and often controversial issue. The white paper discusses key issues related to technology use in education and presents several major findings.

At the same time, we now have an update to the TCO Tool for schools developed by the Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) and Mr. Camfield. This tool, "Deploying 1:1 educational models in large scale: a practical budgeting tool based on TCO", is currently being utilized as part of planning processes in Rwanda, drawing on lessons learned from its earlier use elsewhere in Africa, most notably in Namibia.

Come join what we hope to be a lively presentation and discussion of the findings of both activities, their potential implications, and the underlying methodologies and assumptions underpinning the models explored in this work.

Speakers:

• Karen Coppock, VP of Consulting Services, Vital Wave Consulting
• Brendan Smith, Senior Consultant, Vital Wave Consulting
• Jon Camfield, Director of ICT, Youth Service America

11am to 12:30pm - 6 November 2008
The World Bank "J" Building,
701 18th Street, NW, room J-B1-075

While this Technology Salon promises to be larger than usual, seating is still limited, so please RSVP to Lorelei Lacdao, with the subject line: "Attend ICT/ed TCO meeting"