Covid 19 School Closure, the Digital Divide and Facilitation of On-line Learning in Sri Lanka

By Upali M. Sedere

B.Ed. (Hons) Cey., MA & PhD (Iowa), PhD (MCU)

Rector &CEO of SIBA Campus and National Adviser to the Ministry of Education

Although social policies talk of equity the socioeconomic disparities have expanded over the last five decades. The disparities widened since the introduction of the Open Economy in 1977.  Today, 60% of the Sri Lankan population of 20million do not get a reasonable-share of the GDP. The lowest 20%, (the bottom 4 million people) of population in the socioeconomic level gets less than 5% of the GDP while the richest 20% (4million) enjoying 51% of GDP. 

With the Covid 19 school closure efforts are being made by the government to facilitate home-based learning to students.  Obviously today such efforts largely rests on technology, particularly the internet and computers. In developed countries all school children follow virtual classroom from home. Children see their classmates on the learning screen and their teacher presenting material and explaining, asking questions, giving assignments as well as feedback. Beside these through the internet e-learning material is sent to every child and instructions given to parents how to set a learning corner at home for the child.  

The socioeconomic disparity as well as the urban-rural and estate sector diversity is a good reflection of the “Digital Divide” in Sri Lanka. This of course is not a problem only in Sri Lanka. UNESCO in a recent web release indicates that“Half of the total number of learners – some 826 million students – kept out of the classroom by the COVID-19 pandemic, do not have access to a household computer and 43% (706 million) have no internet at home, at a time when digitally-based distance learning is used to ensure educational continuity in the vast majority of countries.”(UNESCO-April 21, 2020). These figures were compiled by the Teacher Task Force, an international alliance coordinated by UNESCO, on the basis of data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the International Telecommunication Union.

The “Digital Divide in Sri Lanka

Although we talk of a ‘Digital Revolution’, it is only for the rich and the affluent people but it has become the new divide between the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-nots’.  It is the high time of a global crisis when the children of the poor are further marginalized in education.  The children of the affluent are on ‘On-line’ learning in Virtual Classrooms, while the little education that the children of the poor were getting a few hours in a sub-standard school-house are stopped schooling by the virus. We need to talk and act on how can the gap of IT revaluation be filled?  How can the digital divide be closed?  How can we bring about an inclusive digital revolution in eduction?

Since 1980 Sri Lanka provide free textbooks to children to bring equity.  Textbook is to be taught by the teacher.  These are not self-learning material. The National Institute of Education also prepares Teacher Instructional Manuals (TIMs) for the teacher indicating how the teacher should use the book.  Even though every student in Sri Lanka has aset of ‘free textbooks’ at home, without a teacher the books have very little use for many of the underprivileged students. Whereas the on-line learning has many more modalities in use.  The Virtual Classrooms where the teacher and all students could meet and see each other and talk and share learning on the computer screen just like in a regular classroom. The Moodle System that sets Digital Platform for students could facilitate with various forms of learning with multiple applications such as the PowerPoint, Youtube, WhatsApp, Hangout, Viber, Zoom and Skype. Beside these the Microsoft also offer a wide range of facilities to establish ‘Learning Management System’ (LMS).Many of the Apps allow interactive learning.  All these needs certain facilities for the learner. However, all such applications have to be put to good use under a Learning Management System and the Sri Lankan higher learning institutes have not made good use of such. If LMS is strengthened the Open University can be the leading university in higher education in Sri Lanka.

Availability of Computer at Home:

The Sri Lanka Census and Statistics Department Household survey  of year 2019 indicates that  Percentage of availability of desktop or laptop computer at a household vary between 22% - 24% between 2017 to 2019 period. Of this 40% are urban homes, 20% rural homes and only 4% in the Estate Sector. 

Computer & Digital Literacy:

Computer literacy rate among the age 5-69 year old population is around 43% in urban sector, and about 31% in rural sector and about 14% in the Estate Sector.  However the Computer Literacy among the 15-19year population is as high as 64%.   The Digital literacy for the 15-19 age group is around 78% and 5-9 year age group records Digital literacy of 28%.  Digital literacy is a lower level of ability than the computer literacy where one is able to use social media but not necessarily do any other higher level operations using the computer.

Internet Access:

All digital or IT activities need internet facility to make good use of computers or Smart Phones. The household survey of 2019 indicates that 60% of the youth in the age group of 19-24 and 15% of the age group of 14-19 have internet facility at home. In the urban sector 46% use internet at home, in the rural sector it is only 27% and the Estate Sector 11%. However the e-mail is used only by 23% in the urban sector, 10% in rural sector and 3% in the Estate sector.

The internet service packages of the service providers cater to the clients need. Most of the middle class homes got the minimum package that falls far too short for On-line learning.  Many of the university students use dongles, a portable internet devise, low cost and grossly insufficient for On-line learning.

On-line Learning

Access to internet and computers have a direct bearing on the socioeconomic status of the family.  Though Sri Lanka is a Middle Income country with a GPA of US$4000/ the socioeconomic disparity is very high. Only 04% of the GDP is shared by the bottom 20% of the population. Provincial disparities are even wider than the national averages. Internet facilities or access to internet is still not even a plausible dream for rural and estate sector people. The Survey does not indicate how far the English Literacy or the Educational Attainments correlates with the 70% digital literacy. One can reasonably imagine that conventional social divide that was mostly based on English literacy or one’s ability to speak, read and write English correlates with digital divide. The World Wide Web is also dominated predominantly by English and this too cause a limitation on the rural and estate sector vernacular learner.

Smart Phones and Tablets:

Many urban people believe that everyone has a smartphone today.  The 2019 Household survey indicates that of the 46% internet uses 76% connect to the internet by Smart-Phone; 25% with computer (desktop or laptop), 2% by Tablets, and another 2% by other types of phones.  Of course over a year these percentages may have increased. Yet, a tablet or a Smart phone is not the best on-line learning devise for a formal student of a college or school because many of the assignments needs many other academic skills to be demonstrated and the ideal is the laptop or minimum a notepad.

An Inclusive Digital Revolution

It is obvious that a public education system cannot offer equitable access to home-based on-line learning system in Sri Lanka as of today it naturally caters only to the socioeconomically affluent urban groups discriminating the rural and the estate sector students and the children of the poor due to the existing digital divide. My experience as the Rector & CEO of a UGC enlisted private degree awarding college, the SIBA Campus at Pallekele, where I have successfully introduce the Digital Platform for Undergraduate learning.  All our undergraduates for the last three years study on ‘Digital Platform’ (http://www.sibablackboard.com) and it runs well during running sessions.  However with the Covid 19 closure of our campus some of our students around 10% could not effectively join the ‘Virtual Classrooms’ as they had very weak internet connections in their homes.  Even the fee-paying undergraduates of relatively affluent homes too face this problem of poor connectivity,students of the State Universities facing more disparity in the digital divide is obvious.  This is more so as many of the state university undergraduates of today come from the rural sector. They are handicapped by the digital divide.  Today Sri Lanka has an Executive President Excellency Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakse, an expert in Information Technology and he well understand the Digital Divide,beside he also has the genuine interest of provide equitable access to education for all youth.  This is the right time that we all have to think aloud how we could close the Digital Divide to bring an ‘Inclusive Digital Revolution’ in Sri Lankan education system.