Information technology and its challenges

Information technology and its challenges

Ismail S Talib examines some of the implications IT will have
for university education.

SINGAPORE: There is a lot of talk on information technology
(IT) in education in Singapore nowadays. But this issue is not
only discussed in Singapore. IT was one of the major themes in
the 32nd Conference of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education
Council in Manila in February. In the Philippines itself, it has
been said that President Ramos is no longer interested in
"technological leapfrogging", but of "pole-vaulting" the country
into the next century. His updated National Information
Technology Plan 2000 will turn the country into a "smart"
Philippines driven by IT at the turn of the century. Thailand has
a similar plan.

As we know, the most ambitious plan for IT among Singapore's
neighbors is that of Malaysia, with its Multimedia Super Corridor
(MSC). What is less apparent, but more important in the long run
to the country, is its equally ambitious plans to transform
education at all levels, through a more extensive use of IT.

The Malaysians are at present setting up 85 "smart" schools,
which will be ready by the beginning of 1999, where IT will be
comprehensively utilized; by 2010, all Malaysian schools will be
"smart". There are also plans to extend the use of multimedia to
cover the subjects of languages, science and mathematics, and
eventually covering all subjects from Standard One to Form Five.
The Malaysian government also has proposals for university and
continuing education. In February, the Malaysian Education
Minister Najib Tun Razak advised the Center for Distance
Education at Universiti Sains Malaysia to seriously consider the
use of IT so that the center could play a more active role at
both the national and regional levels.

As for university education proper, not only will there be the
Malaysia University of Science and Technology, a premier graduate
research university with its initial batch of 50 students this
September, but it has been reported that Renong Bhd has set aside
between M$400 million and M$500 million to build a multimedia
university in the MSC, in addition to the government's plans for
other schools in the vicinity.

Singapore is also making advances in IT, and should view
developments in the region as complementing its IT industry, and
other industries connected to it, instead of competing with them.
In Singapore, we have the Singapore One program, where, by the
end of 1998, 95 percent of households and most offices and
schools will be electronically linked. The country also wants to
be described as an "Intelligent Island" by the year 2000.

The importance of IT in education was highlighted by Prime
Minister Goh Chok Tong in his National Day rally speech last
year. A sum of $1.5 billion has been set aside for the
implementation of the IT program in Singapore's primary schools
and, by 1998, at least 100 new computers will be installed in
each school.

Even before the realization of Singapore's IT plans in the
next few years, it ranks second in computer literacy in the world
today, according to the Global Competitiveness Report. One reason
why Singapore has an edge in the region is that the character of
its IT industry is, as described by the head of Singapore's
National Computer Board, "multifaceted".

Superhighway

However, because of the speed of IT's development, it is easy
to be complacent. The maddening pace of growth of the Information
Superhighway, for example, makes it both politically and
educationally difficult to keep up with it. In this regard, U.S.
President Bill Clinton, during a speech last year emphasizing the
importance of IT in education, joked that when he took office in
January 1993, "only high energy physicists had ever heard of what
is called the Worldwide Web", but "Now even my cat has its own
Web page." But this does not mean that one can keep still (unless
one wants to end up trying to catch Bill Clinton's cat's tail!).

One way Singapore can continue to have its "multifaceted" edge
is through the more extensive use of IT, even among citizens who
are not IT professionals. This is where, from the perspective of
a university teacher, a more extensive use of IT in the
universities has to be undertaken, so that it will cover all
disciplines.

Indeed, given the extensive development of IT both in
Singapore and the region in the next few years, it is something
university teachers cannot do without, unless they want to be
pedagogical dinosaurs in the 21st century, which, given IT's
crackling pace of development, may happen sooner rather than
later. For this reason, there is currently a strong interest at
the National University of Singapore to put course information on
the Web, a development which would have been unanticipated only a
few years ago. A similar interest is also found at the Nanyang
Technological University.

Until the past few months, however, much of the news in
Singapore on IT and education was on primary and secondary
education, and less on university education. One reason for this
may be because what was happening at the universities until
recent months might have been less newsworthy: for some years,
the universities had a head start with computers and had more
computers in relation to the number of students when compared
with most schools, and were introduced to the Internet before the
general public. At any rate, the introduction of interconnected
computers in schools will mean that most students entering
universities will be conversant with the use of IT for learning,
and this is a factor which all university teachers cannot ignore.

Another tendency on news reporting on IT and education in
Singapore is that much of it has to do with the equipment and
facilities to be provided: more computers in schools, more
schools with Internet access, and so forth. This may be a
reflection of what is easier to report in the newspapers.
However, we are merely dealing with the externalities, and not
really with the profound effect that IT may have on education and
society. Having more computers in schools may very well mean that
more students will be given the training to access them for study
from their homes, even during what we now call "school hours."

One of the effects of the revolution in IT is, if you would
permit me to use two phrases which have become cliches in recent
years, that we are moving not only towards a world without
borders but to classrooms without walls as well. The Principal of
the premier girls' secondary school in Singapore, Raffles Girls'
School, is already talking about letting her students study from
home, even during school hours.

As for distance education at the university, the use of the
Internet has been discussed in Singapore by the Department of
Continuing Education at the NUS. However, distance education will
not be totally distinct from mainstream university education in
the future. It is only a matter of time before the line between
distance and face-to-face education becomes blurred. In this
regard, students will have to learn to be truly independent
learners, not only in the sense of being able to learn by
themselves, without the direct guidance of teachers, but also to
be able to conduct academic research with first-order materials
even while they are effectively away from concrete libraries and
the physical university.

In such a world, students will be able to "go" to the best
universities anywhere in the world, even while staying at home,
and the best universities will be able to "grow" beyond the
physical constraints of their concrete buildings. This is where
the real future challenge to universities in Singapore and in the
region may come from.

Dr. Ismail S. Talib is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of
English Language and Literature, National University of
Singapore.