Digital Equalizer Program - Orissa

Digital Equalizer Program - Orissa

American India Foundation, through its flagship “Digital Equalizer (DE)” program has been working in the underprivileged government schools of Orissa, in association waith the School and Mass Education Department, Govt. of Orissa (S&ME) and Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA). Orissa being one of the most backward states of India in terms of resources and availability of basic infrastructure, posed peculiar challenges as far as the implementation of the Digital Equalizer program is concerned, which started in November, 2004 in a pilot scale covering 10 schools spread over two clusters – Bhubaneshwar having six schools and Angul having 4 schools respectively. The large scale model was formally launched in July 2006 and as of now we have covered a total of 160 High Schools, spread over 20 districts.

As we shifted gears to a large scale mode from 2006 onwards we faced a number of problems which while on the face of it appears to be generic are in fact to a large extent context specific. These have been summarized below:

1. Based as it is on onsite training of teachers we found that at the school level the normal flow of training was hampered due to various types of distractions starting from extra classes due to teacher absenteeism to teacher shortages as a result of vacant posts, school holidays, lack of understanding on the part of the headmasters who were mostly computer illiterate and avoid learning computers by giving the excuse of administrative work, moods, whims and caprices on the part of the teachers.
2. Lack of knowledge of computers and availability of the same to a great extent as far as the district education authorities were concerned.
3. Lack of understanding of issues which are often complex in nature as far as effective integration of technology in teaching is concerned, at the departmental level.
4. Absence of an overarching ICT for Education policy at the state level where the focus was more on a procurement model rather than on an output oriented model. In such a case as is common the learning component is completely missing.
5. Absence of a well thought out technology deployment model taking into account the total cost of ownership.[1]
6. Absence of a joint monitoring and evaluation mechanism in the absence of which it became a solo exercise on the part of AIF only. In a word there were serious problems of mainstreaming due to lack of institutionalization.
7. As far as training was concerned there were a number of issues the most critical of which was that adequate stress on the pedagogy component was missing which needed to be urgently fixed on the part of AIF.
8. More rigorous training of the DE master trainers based on well designed, training materials as well as capacity building of the master trainers on strategic management skills was required on the part of AIF, so as to cut down on the transmission loss at the school level.
9. A baseline, mid-line and end line study based on indicators which were rigorously worked out backed with a sturdy MIS was required to track the learning outcomes. In our experience the impact on Students, Teachers and Schools cannot be attributed directly to the ICT intervention per se as there are lot of other factors like presence of an exceptional teacher or “champion “ which could have contributed to the motivation level, arrest in the absenteeism, retention of concepts, increased communication and confidence amongst the student-teaching community.

Mutatis mutandis a strategically designed model well embedded within the government system was the need of the day and in order to take the program to the next level this was the way to do it – a system wide approach[2] was imperative. A system wide approach is designed to extract the full impact of deploying ICT in schools.

The points summarized above, provides the rationale behind adopting the “Resource Centre Training Model.”

Taking the program to a qualitatively higher level and building up on the work done so far, AIF and the School and mass Education Department (SME) Govt. of Orissa, has worked out the DE - Resource Centre Training Model, to be implemented in 104 schools of Orissa, spread over 6 geographically contiguous districts, consisting of 52 Secondary Schools and 52 Upper Primary Schools for the academic year 2010-12.

As part of this model AIF, in association with the SME Department has set up an Apex Level Resource-Cum-Training Centre in SCERT located in the state capital. This serves as a feeder centre to the Six Zonal Level Resource-Cum-Training Centre’s set up by SCERT in all the three Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (IASEs) and three corresponding District Institute of Education and Training (DIETs), spread over three revenue divisions.  The SCERT Resource-Cum-Training Centre will work for the capacity building of teacher educators, SCERT staff, and administrators of the State Education department. The six centres comprising the three IASEs and three DIET level centres will serve as teacher training centres, for the respective schools (one hundred and four schools) within their catchment area.

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[1] Budgets only consider the immediate costs and seldom, if ever, consider the long term costs of purchasing, deploying and maintaining ICTs. For example, costs for replacements, disposal or even operating costs for refresher training, maintenance and technical support are often ignored. The sum of all this costs is called the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

[2] The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as discussed above captures all the components of a system wide approach.