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.