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NEWS

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Old Delhi yields to New Age communications

Binoo K John and Shashank Vaid

New delhi 10 JULY

IF ONE is looking for sending cheap Internet messages in the capital, one

will in all probability land up in an overflowing, pestilential

neighbourhood near the main railway station.

Backpack tourists, cycle rickshaws, carts pulled by labourers and sickly

horses, a million cyclists and madly cavorting cars jostle for space on its

teeming streets. The stench of boiling oil, burning diesel from mini power

generators and myriad varieties of sweetmeats encrusted with flies on the

streetside assail the senses.

Welcome to Paharganj, a place which Delhiites love to hate. Here there is a

constant cavalcade of life in various stages of evolution - from dismembered

beggars to millionaire traders in their Opel Astras. In Paharganj can be

seen a microcosm of subcontinental life. What are Internet cafes doing in

this seedy underbelly of the sprawling capital?

The cyber cafes are the latest showpiece of this unmanageable neighbourhood

which is known to tourists from around the world as the place for the

cheapest lodgings and is listed in the Lonely Planet guide, the bible of

travellers worldwide.

Be it hotels, guest houses, travel agencies or even smaller shops, everybody

and his neighbour is offering Internet services at prices that are being

slashed by the day.

"Price is the main factor for the popularity of Paharganj Internet shops. We

charge Rs 30 per hour for members and membership can be taken up by anyone

by paying Rs 50, which is also the lowest rate available anywhere, thereby

tempting tourists to visit us," says Ashok Sharma of Cyber-Club at Gold

Regency, known to be the city's biggest cyber cafe.

"We know India has a formidable reputation as a centre for computer

software. So we expected this," says Christian Fetterson, a Danish national.

"Indians are more open to our ways of living," he adds with a smile that

resembles the expression on the face of an Indian who has discovered a curry

house in London.

It is not just tourists who visit the cyber cafes. Even local

rickshaw-puller Ram Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, now occasionally visits a

cyber cafe.

"I came here for the first time with Anna, a Russian tourist, who regularly

used to communicate with her friends in Moscow. For me it is just like

watching a movie in a theatre," says Ram Singh who watches a movie or two

and a little more once in a while. Most foreign tourists in Paharganj use

e-mail, though surfing the Net is also quite popular.

"E-mail is a cheaper way of getting across to friends and relatives back

home rather than making overseas calls that are quite expensive," says Amit

Kumar Tyagi, an instructor at a travel agency. Foreigners also look upon the

Internet as a means of finding their way around, says Gaurav Saxena, an

instructor at Steven's Cafe, another Internet outlet in Paharganj. According

to him, one of the most favourite websites accessed by the tourists is

www.lonelypost.com. Another popular site, Saxena says, is

www.netcageguide.com, which has the addresses of cyber cafes all over the

world.

As many tourists come to India seeking spiritual solace, sites on meditation

techniques are also quite popular. "I expected it in a big city like Delhi,"

says Jean, a Canadian national seeking nirvana. Whether it is the

nirvana-seeker, or the fun-seeker or someone from distant lands wanting to

trek the Himalayas, they all finally land up in Paharganj.

And now even residents of other neighbourhoods of the capital are making

their way to the Internet clubs of Paharganj. Even the elderly have begun

visiting. "It is never too late. I can find the websites for two of my

hobbies - poetry and painting," says Manmohan Singh, 80, who has become a

regular at Gold Regency.

Paharganj survives because it keeps reinventing itself. From being a

decrepit neighbourhood to a place for cheap goods, and then cheap lodgings,

it kept evolving and adjusting to the needs of commerce and tourism.

When it seemed that other places would overtake it even as a destination for

tourists, history came to its aid. After the collapse of the Soviet Union,

plane-loads of traders from the Soviet republics came looking for loads of

cheap goods, like jeans and shirts. They also made their way to this louche

locality near the railway station. Along with them came sex workers

strutting their stuff. Paharganj welcomed them all.

Then when cyberworld opened up, Paharganj again repositioned itself as the

provider of the cheapest access to the Internet. Now the weary European

backpacker, the fun-seeker, the Russian trader, they all trudge the seedy

streets of Paharganj and then cruise along cyberstreets.

ANNOUNCEMENTS/REQUESTS

-----------

Dear Sir/Madam,

Have you worked on an ICT Project and do you have a story to share? Or do

you know someone who did? Please pay attention to the following:

The ICT Stories project is an online network where people share practical

knowledge on ICTs and development set up by InfoDev

the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD)

opportunity to share your experiences AND win a trip to Malaysia! Enter your

story in the ICT Stories competition. Based on a set of criteria four

winning stories will be chosen. The writers of these stories will be given

the opportunity to travel to Malaysia to the Global Knowledge Conference

(GKII) to present their findings. The criteria are as follows:

1. The project involves important issues in the filed of ICT and

development, and uses ICT in an innovative way;

2. The project has a significant effect on the sector it is applied to;

3. The project serves as a model for other initiatives;

4. The story gives a background of the project and describe the incentives

for creating it;

5. The story clearly specifies the challenges encoutered during the project

and describe how these challenges were overcome;

6. The story includes advice for others.

There is no set format - it's your story. Use as many or as few words as you

like. Deadline is November 1999. Enter now! You can either send your story

along with your name and address to Maria Verheij at IICD (verheij@iicd.org)

Please forward this message to project coordinators within your network and

allow them to share their experience as well. If you have any questions,

Maria Verheij

IICD Policy officer

ARTICLES

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Students' Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course: A Taboo

Topic in the Discourse

This is a 2000 word summary. The full paper is available upon request.

Recent cutting-edge technology, e.g., digital communications and learning

technologies, enables universities to implement distance education to reach

a diverse population and to provide open learning environments 24 hours a

day 7 days a week. For example, Hanna (1998) states that "growing demand for

learning combined with these technical advances is in fact a critical

pressure point for challenging the dominant assumptions and characteristics

of existing traditionally organized universities in the 21st century".

Hence, there are substantial discussions about distance education in higher

education. Consequently the number of distance education courses is growing

(Hanna, 1998; National Center for Education Statistics, 1998; Rahm & Reed,

1998; Roberts, 1996). The major body of the literature favors distance

education. Once consensus is reached, it tends not to be disturbed by a

dissonant idea (Heylighen, 1992). Indeed, similar patterns are found in

other relatively young fields, for example, in Business Process

Reengineering (Kling & Tillquist, 1998) and hypertext (Unsworth, 1997)

literatures. However, the studies in the computer-mediated distance

education are more anecdotal than systematically empirical or critical. The

current trend makes us believe that distance education will expand

educational opportunities. This article queries this assumption. The

significance of this study is to investigate problems with web-based

distance education.

This is a case study of difficulties in learning effectively in a web-based

distance education course, offered by a major university in the United

States. The entire course was provided through a web site. This study is

based on interviews and observations of the students in this course. Only a

small portion of the literature indicates students' isolation in distance

education, although many authors (e.g. Besser & Donahue, 1996; Twigg, 1997)

emphasize the importance of this issue. Thus, the primary research question

was: How do the students in this course overcome their feelings of isolation

in a virtual classroom to create the sense of a community of learning?

However, during the observations and interviews with the informants

(including John), it was apparent that students' isolation was not as big of

a problem as frustration in this course. Possibly because of the small class

size, students supported each other and had a sense of a community of

learning. The real issue in this course was the students' frustration, which

was not examined in the literature. Therefore, the final research question

in this study was: Do students' frustrations in the web-based distance

education course inhibit their educational opportunity? In addition to the

main research question, key questions examined in this study were: What

causes frustrations among the students? How do these students deal with

their frustrations? Are there individual differences between students who

are comfortable with technology and those who are not? This article

questions the current literature and advocates the importance of inquiry on

problems in distance education. Throughout this present article, we refer to

distance education as computer-mediated distance education.

Higher education in the U.S. is facing a challenge to meet new demands for

the next century. Various criticisms against traditional classrooms appear

frequently, such as lack of personal attention, boredom, outdated knowledge,

lack of appropriate skills for workplaces, and inappropriateness for a

diverse population (Diamond, 1997; Gardiner, 1997; Handy, 1998; Roueche,

1998; Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1993). Many researchers advocate

"solutions" such as active learning, learner-centered principles, effective

use of technology, and collaborative learning (American Psychological

Association, 1997; Bonk & Kim, 1998; Cove & Love, 1996; ERIC, 1998;

Schroeder, 1996). Consequently, the expectation for technology is

disproportionately high.

This enthusiastic attitude toward technology is not entirely new. Kling

(1994) identifies "technological utopianism," which refers to "analyses in

which the use of specific technologies plays a key role in shaping a benign

social vision" (Kling, 1994). A similar attitude is found in the history of

educational technology:

Most of what we read or hear about computers in education emphasizes only

one aspect, usually the good points, but occasionally the bad, to the

exclusion of other points of view. This is at least partly due to the

screening effect of the popular press, who favor the excitement of extremism

over the calm of rationality, preferring in the name of "reader interest" to

create what Monosky (1984) calls an artificial dichotomy (Ragsdale, 1988, p.

50).

Both Kling and Ragsdale caution extreme views of technology, either positive

or negative, and suggest that more socially realistic analyses are needed.

When computers were introduced in classrooms in the 1980s, "extolling the

computers as a boon to critical thinking, professional educators by and

large have been conspicuously uncritical about the computer itself" (Sloan,

1985, p.1). Rather than accepting the enthusiastic attitude toward

technologies in education, Cuban (1986) observes an unrelenting cycle of

technology promotion and adoption in classrooms by reviewing the literature

on the educational use of motion pictures, radio, and television since

1920s. The cycle indicates a pattern; technology was introduced in

classrooms by enthusiastic advocates, such as administrators and

researchers, but teachers failed to effectively use technology because of

the lack of equipment, time, and training. Cuban cautions us not to expect

too much of computers in classrooms because their use may follow the same

pattern as other technologies. As some authors (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1984;

Ragsdale, 1988; Salomon, 1985; Sloan, 1985) criticize Computer-Assisted

Instruction in K-12, recently other authors also have criticized educational

computing in general, such as information technology in higher education

(see Noble, 1998) and computers in schools (see Oppenheimer, 1997).

A systematic search of the ERIC database helped to locate some research

about problems of distance education, such as students' isolation, lack of

effective advice (e.g., Abrahamson, 1998; Brown, 1996; Rahm & Reed, 1998).

However, there is little research about students' frustration in distance

education. A few authors identify this issue (e.g. Dede, 1996; Freenberg,

1987; Stahlman, 1996), but these are rather "socially-thin" (Kling &

Tillquist, 1998) and do not indicate the problems in social contexts. Even

the few researchers who mentioned deeper social factors of the problems in

distance education did not really focus on students' frustrations (e.g.

Burge, 1994; Kang, 1988; Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire, 1984). This topic has

never been in the mainstream of discussion in computer-mediated distance

education. We question why this phenomenon of students' frustration has not

been seriously studied, and analyze the following four possible reasons.

First, the researchers who study distance education may be biased toward

technology. Bowers (1988) also urges that technology is not value-free. Many

authors in the literature are affiliated with technology-oriented

departments, such as educational technology, library and information

science, or technology support centers. Therefore, they might have a

favorable view of technology, such as seeing "distance education via

technology as a potential silver bullet" (Twigg, 1997, p. 28). Noble (1998)

asserts that "behind this effort [promoting technology in higher education]

are the ubiquitous technozealots who simply view computers as the panacea

for everything, because they like to play with them". In addition, the

special issue of web-based learning in Educational Technology (Hackbarth,

1997) is devoted entirely to technical issues (e.g. Starr, 1997) and

teachers' perspectives (e.g. Berge, 1997). McIssac and Gunawardena (1996)

state that "more than 23% of the literature reviewed concerned issues

related to technology and the role of the distance educator" (p. 421). Burge

(1994) asserts that most of the literature on CMC in higher education is

"cautious optimism to hyperbole" (p. 22). Thus, the field has not critically

addressed negative implications, especially from students' perspectives in

distance education.

The second possible reason that little research on students' frustration is

found is because few qualitative research studies have been done (Burge,

1994; Windschitl, 1998), so that the fine-grained dynamics of virtual

classrooms are unknown. In addition, McIssac and Gunawardena (1996)

criticize the research literature in distance education because of lack of

research rigor.

Third, students may not have had opportunities to express their frustrations

with web-based distance education. At the end of the semester, students

might make positive comments about the courses because of a relief of

finishing a course and concern about hurting instructors' feelings.

Therefore, since little research has studied their learning processes

throughout the semester, students' frustrations have received little

attention. That is why the results of many studies are positive, including

such findings as students enjoying their experiences despite their technical

problems (Gregor & Cuskelly, 1994; Yakimovicz & Murphy, 1995).

Finally, it is possible that past studies were conducted only with

instructors experienced in distance education (e.g. Gunawardena, 1992), not

with novices. More experienced instructors might better handle students'

frustrations, technological problems, and ambiguous instructions to reduce

the obstacles to distance education.

However, the history of educational technology teaches us that it is

necessary to study failures as well as successes. Bryson and de Castell

(1998) urge that we need to pay more attention to failures of educational

innovation because it will tell us why success stories are arbitrary.

Unsworth (1997) also argues that "many things that we take to be trivial, or

embarrassing, or simply wrong, will be of interest to our peers in the

future". He claims that people learn from errors and failures, and suggests

that recording them is necessary to make progress.

>From interviews and observations (thinking aloud), two interpretations were

formed in this study. It appeared that there were two levels of frustration

among students in this course. The first level related to technological

problems. Students without access to technical support were especially

frustrated. Also, students whose computer skills were inadequate had

technological problems. The second level involved the course content.

Students were frustrated because of a lack of immediate feedback from the

instructor and ambiguous instructions on the web and via e-mail.

It appeared that there was a gap in the teacher's perspective of the

students' frustration. The instructor seemed to think that she had solved

the problems of students' frustration; she stated during the interview:

They [the students] thought that the problems they had were basically their

own; other people did not have the same problem until we opened up the

conversation and they realized that, oh, yeah, we were all in the same boat.

Now, they have this peer support coming in. That [problem], I think, we took

care of pretty well. (personal communication, November 18).

However, her students still expressed their frustration earnestly during

observations and interviews late in the semester. Part of the reason for the

instructor's misperception resulted from the fact that the students' e-mail

regarding their frustrations were only the tip of the iceberg. Students did

not express all of their frustrations.

In summary, this study observed that in this distance education course,

students' frustration originated from three sources:

* technological problems

* minimal and not timely feedback from the instructor

* ambiguous instructions on the WWW site as well as via e-mail,

and asserted that these frustrations were so overwhelming that some students

gave up on the formal content of the course. The instructor's personal

reflection note revealed that two other students who began taking this

course from distant sites dropped it because they could not overcome

technical problems. In addition, during interviews two students affirmed

that they will not take distance education courses in the future because

they could not deal with these frustrations anymore. Therefore, students'

frustrations were serious problems in this distance education course.

We conclude by cautioning about advertising only the virtues of

computer-mediated distance education. Most of the articles in distance

education (e.g., Barnard, 1997; Harasim, 1993; Yakimovicz & Murphy, 1995)

discuss positive aspects of distance education, whereas only a few scholars

(e.g., Bromley & Apple, 1998; Jaffee, 1998; Wegerif, 1998) examine the

limitations and problems. It is acceptable to fantasize about the future

when a field is young, because these discussions can propel the field

forward. Distance education has great potential for providing rich

environments for students; however, as history has taught us, technology is

not a panacea. It has trade-offs.

It is time to seriously consider the actual experiences among students in

distance education courses and to critically discuss the phenomena of

distance education. As Bates (1994) states, "it is a relatively untested

assumption that advanced technologies, . . ., are pedagogically more

effective than older" (p. 1577) technologies. We also question if technology

can improve pedagogy with little special effort. For more than a decade

Clark (1983; 1994) has raised the arguments of whether or not media

influence better learning.

This case illustrates the frustrations that students can experience while

taking a distance education course, and how these frustrations can

significantly inhibit their educational opportunity. The current trend in

the literature appears to over-praise computer-mediated distance education.

This "technological utopianism" (Kling, 1994) is also found in the history

of educational technology in general. Clearly, we need more student-centered

studies of distance education. We need research that is designed to teach us

how the appropriate use of technology and pedagogy could make distance

education beneficial for students. "[I]f failure isn't a possibility,

neither is discovery" (Unsworth, 1997).

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***************************

Telematics for African Development Consortium

P.O. Box 31822

Braamfontein

2017

Johannesburg

South Africa

Tel: +27 +11 403-2813

Fax: +27 +11 403-2814

neilshel@icon.co.za

www.saide.org.za

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