Op-ed/Special Reports

Regional cooperation and PPPs key to developing educational technology in Sri Lanka: IPS

Primary school students in Chennai Credit: GPE/Deepa Srikantaiah

Himani Vithanage

Thursday March 7, 2024 1:11 pm

By Himani Vithanage

Thursday March 7, 2024 1:11 pm

ECONOMYNEXT – The use of technology in education has notably enhanced productivity and resilience in the educational sector. As the world increasingly turns to educational technology (Ed-tech) solutions, it is essential to align these advancements with Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which advocates for inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

The Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) recently hosted a hybrid Roundtable Discussion titled ‘Ed-tech Towards Achieving SDGs,’ offering valuable perspectives on the role of Ed-tech in bridging educational gaps and the facilitators and barriers to the expansion of Ed-tech going ahead.

Currently, the primary focus in Ed-tech revolves around adapting to rapidly evolving technologies. There are also concerns that overreliance on technology could widen disparities in accessing quality education. The preceding discussion provides insights into how Ed-tech can be used to address these gaps and overcome barriers, emphasising the importance of regional cooperation and public-private partnerships, and the recent emergence of AI.

Regional Collaboration in Facilitating Ed-tech

A key insight from the discussion was the pivotal role of regional cooperation in accelerating the implementation and adoption of Ed-tech. Ms Cahya Raith from the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization – Regional Open Learning Center (SEAMOLEC) underscored the role of knowledge sharing, joint research and development efforts, and collaborative capacity-building programmes in advancing Ed-tech in the region.

Similarly, the SEAMEO plays a crucial role in the region’s Ed-tech landscape, fostering innovative practices in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) with a keen eye on integrating metaverse and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. They are also looking at enhancing the capabilities of educators through their regional training programmes which are designed to improve technology integration in the learning process.

The alignment of Southeast Asian countries towards a knowledge-based economy has emerged as a driving force in shaping Ed-tech policies in the region. Ms Ratna Hartine, representing Angel Investment Network Indonesia (ANGIN), noted that Ed-tech policies within the region are more focused on digitising national education data and administration. This includes establishing digital repositories like lectures, ebooks, simulation software and other learning materials, and seeking to expand access to quality education by leveraging mobile learning platforms and by equipping teachers with the required skills through teacher training programmes.

The Role of Public-Private Partnerships

The discussion also shed light on the critical role of public-private partnerships (PPP) in expanding Ed-tech. Mr Asith de Silva, Senior Manager – Social Innovation at Dialog Axiata PLC, discussed how their collaboration with Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Education significantly contributed to the success of ‘the ‘Nenasa’ programme. Nenasa has been delivering educational content for Sri Lankan students since 2009 via a variety of technological means including TV channels and mobile apps, as well as teacher training programmes for teachers in utilising technology in the teaching process.

India’s ‘OLabs’ is another noteworthy PPP in South Asia that makes lab resources readily (anytime) and remotely (anywhere) available to students without access to physical labs or where equipment is not available in their schools due to scarcity or cost. The initiative was pioneered by AmritaCREATE and C-DAC under a research grant from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in India, and collaborating and funding support from the public sector has been instrumental in developing such Ed-tech initiatives that support education in schools. Students can access over 170 interactive simulations online anytime, anywhere with OLabs.

Improving Access for Vulnerable Groups

A significant part of the roundtable focused on using Ed-tech to enhance access to education for vulnerable populations. Several Ed-tech initiatives in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that cater to this purpose include Pakistan’s ‘WonderTree’ initiative for children with disabilities, Indonesia’s ‘BEEP’ for out-of-school children, India’s ‘OLabs’ and ‘Class Saathi’ for rural children and children from underprivileged areas. These initiatives can support to fill shortages of special education teachers. For example, at present in Pakistan there is only one special need therapist for every 230,000 children with special needs. WonderTree in Pakistan has filled some of this gap in education, benefitting around 4000 students with special needs. Recognising its potential, the UNICEF is actively supporting its expansion efforts.

‘‘Currently an assessment could be deployed in about 5 minutes, in class, student responses are instantaneous and so are the results (he doesn’t need to grade them separately). Traditional assessment usually takes 3-4 hours each’’ says an assistant teacher at a Composite School in India who has been using Class Saathi, an Ed-tech initiative which is a Bluetooth clicker-based smart classroom solution that makes formative assessment easy and fast.

Importantly, Mr Georges Boarde, Senior Education Programme Specialist from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Near East, highlighted the role played by the UNRWA e-learning platform in improving access to remote learning material and resources for Palestinian refugee students. He also stated how they prioritise enhancing education resilience by improving the preparedness of students and teachers for remote learning and teaching in times of emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing conflict in the region. While the UNRWA is a humanitarian organization that provides its services free to refugees, Mr Boarde highlighted the lack of internal revenue sources as a main barrier to implementing their plans for integrating technology in education, as well as the important role played by donors in facilitating the development of Ed-tech, including its scope and quality.

AI’s Role in Quality Education

The discussion also focused on how AI could help education. Dr Gharbi, CEO of Uptitude, a digital learning company, in Tunisia offered insights on the MENA region’s adoption of AI in education through platforms such as Zenon Academy and AI Mentor which uses gamification and other methods to enhance the learning experience of students. But she also emphasised the varying levels of AI integration across countries, with advanced implementations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and a growing interest in AI post-pandemic in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria.

To add to that, Ms Hartine highlighted Sekolah metaverse community, a PPP in Indonesia that uses AI, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) to substitute learning environments like laboratories in schools that lack resources and funding by creating a community. She also noted how such visual experiences are useful for students who struggle with reading. Other participants from the roundtable further highlighted the role of AI in reducing resource requirements, including personnel, reducing costs, and guiding teachers, among its other uses.

Experts from the government sector, private sector, and donor agencies contributed valuable insights to the roundtable discussion. The event, based on a recent IPS study financed by the Southern Voice and managed by the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), provided a comprehensive overview of the Ed-tech landscape and its potential in achieving SDGs.

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Weather and Climate

Water levels rising in Sri Lanka Kalu, Nilwala river basins: Irrigation Department

Monday June 3, 2024 2:17 pm

ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka’s Irrigation Department has issued warnings that water levels in the Kalu River basin are rising and major flooding is possible due to the continuous rain. People living in close proximity are advised to take precautions.

“There is a high possibility of slowly increasing prevailing flood lowline areas of Kiriella, Millaniya, Ingiriya, Horana, Dodangoda, Bulathsinhala, Palinda Nuwara and Madurawala D/S divisions of Ratnapura and Kalutara Districts, up to next 48 hours,” it said issuing a warning.

“In addition, flood situation prevailing at upstream lowline areas of Ratnapura district will further be prevailing with a slight decrease.

“The residents and vehicle drivers running through those area are requested to pay high attention in this regard.

“Disaster Management Authorities are requested to take adequate precautions in this regard.”

The island is in the midst of south western monsoon.

DMC reported that 11,864 people belonging to 3,727 families have been affected due to the weather in Rathnapura, Kegalle, Kilinochchi, Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Kalutara, Gampaha, Colombo, Galle, Matara, Hambantota, Puttalam, Kurunegala, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Badulla, Moneragala, and Trincomalee districts.

Meanwhile, the Meteorology Department stated that showers are expected on most parts of the island today.(Colombo/June3/2024)

Politics

UNP gen secy defends call for postponing Sri Lanka poll, claims opposition silent

The UNP party headquarters in Pitakotte/EconomyNext

Monday June 3, 2024 1:59 pm

ECONOMYNEXT — United National Party (UNP) General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara has defended his call for postponing Sri Lanka’s presidential election by two years, claiming that his proposal was not undemocratic nor unconstitutional.

Speaking to reporters at the UNP headquarters Monday June 03 morning, Bandara also claimed that neither opposition leader Sajith Premadasa nor National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake have spoken against his proposal.

“I have made no statement that’s undemocratic. My statement was in line with provisions of the constitution,” the former UNP parliamentarian said.

He quoted Section 86 of Chapter XIII of the constitution which says: “The President may, subject to the provisions of Article 85, submit to the People by Referendum any matter which in the opinion of the President is of national importance.”

Sections 87.1, 87.2 also elaborates on the matter and describes the parliament’s role, said Bandara.

“I spoke of a referendum and parliament’s duty. Neither of this is antidemocratic or unconstitutional. As per the constitution, priority should be given to ensuring people’s right to life,” he said.

“Some parties may be against what I proposed. They may criticse me. But what I ask them is to come to one position as political parties and make a statement on whether they’re ready to continue the ongoing economic programme,” he added.

Bandara claimed that, though thee has been much criticism of his proposal for a postponement of the presidential election, President Wickremesinghe’s rivals Premadasa and Dissanayake have yet to remark on the matter.

“I suggested that [Premadasa] make this proposal in parliament and for [Dissanayake] to second it. But I don’t see that either Premadasa nor Dissanayake is opposed to it. To date, I have not seen nor heard either of them utter a word against this. I believe they have no objection to my proposal which was made for the betterment of the country,” he said. (Colombo/Jun03/2024)

Politics

Support for AKD drops to SP’s level while RW makes gains, Sri Lanka poll shows

Monday June 3, 2024 12:47 pm

ECONOMYNEXT — Support for leftist candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake dropped six percentage points to 39 percent in April, levelling with opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, while support for President Ranil Wickremesinghe increased three points to 13 percent in a presidential election voting intent poll.

The Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey (SLOTS) conducted by the Institute for Health Policy showed that, according to its Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) provisional estimates of presidential election voting intent, National People’s Power (NPP) leader Dissanayake and main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) lader Premadasa were now neck and neck while United National Party (UNP) leader Wickremesinghe had made some gains. A generic candidate for the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) had the support of 9 percent of the people surveyed, up 1 percentage point from March.

These estimates use the January 2024 revision of the IHP’s SLOTS MRP model. The latest update is for all adults and uses data from 17,134 interviews conducted from October 2021 to 19 May 2024, including 444 interviews during April 2024. According to the institute, 100 bootstraps were run to capture model uncertainty. Margins of error are assessed as 1–4% for April.

SLOTS polling director and IHP director Ravi Rannan-Eliya was quoted as saying: “The SLOTS polling in April suffered from a lower response rate owing to the New Year holidays, and we think this may have skewed the sample in favour of SJB supporters. The early May interviews partly compensated for this, and it’s possible that our June interviews may result in further revisions
to our model estimates.

Rannan-Eliya also noted that a number of other internet polls may be overestimating support for the NPP or its main constituent party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) by about 10 percent.

“We’ve been asked about some other recent internet polls that showed much higher levels of support for the NPP/JVP. We think these over-estimate NPP/JVP support. SLOTS routinely collects data from all respondents on whether they have internet access, and whether they are willing to participate in an internet survey. These data show that NPP/JVP supporters are far more likely to have internet access and even more likely to be willing to respond to internet surveys, and this difference remains even after controlling for past voting behaviour. Our data indicates internet polls may overestimate NPP/JVP support by about 10 percent, and for this kind of reason we have previously decided that the time is not right to do internet polling,” he said.

According to the IHP, its SLOTS MRP methodology first estimates the relationship between a wide variety of characteristics about respondents and their opinions – in this case, ‘If there was a Presidential Election today, who would you vote for?’– in a multilevel statistical model that also smooths month to month changes. It then uses a large data file that is calibrated to the national population to predict voting intent in each month since October 2021, according to what the multilevel model says about their probability of voting for various parties (‘post-stratification’) at each point in time. The multilevel model was estimated 100 times to reflect underlying uncertainties in the model and to obtain margins of error, the institute said. (Colombo/Jun03/2024)