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e-Learning experience in Cambodia, like other developing countries, face a number of challenges in their efforts to compete successfully in the new global economy. Perhaps the most critical resource needed to achieve these goals is trained human capital. While many developing countries are trying to address this need through traditional means, e-Learning is an alternative approach that can overcome many of the challenges involved in reaching underserved students. In an effort to assess the potential of e-Learning in meeting the needs for developing human capital in Cambodia, this paper reports on the experience and achievements of the Provincial Business Education through the Community Information Centers (CICs) project. Key findings are that e-Learning was able to successfully deliver tertiary educational opportunities to underserved provincial students; Cambodian students were able to overcome serious challenges and that female Cambodian student’s demonstrated superior performance in online classes. These results suggest that e-Learning is an effective alternative for delivering tertiary education in Cambodia.e-learning experiences in Cambodia

Development of E-Learning in Cambodia

Cambodia is a country undergoing rapid changes, including a keen demand for access to higher education among rural youth. The major centers for post-secondary school education are mainly located in the capital city, Phnom Penh. Although recently there has been a proliferation of private universities these programs are lecture-based and require students to attend regular scheduled classes. Distance education and/or independent study options are hard to find in government or private universities.

After over two decades of civil war, especially during the genocidal regime from 1975 – 1979, the educational system of Cambodia was slowly rebuilt from infrastructures in the society were completely destroyed. The educational system had sempbance of normalcy in 1993. After the second election in 1998, the Royal Government and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) have made greater efforts to stimulate education system reform which includes introduction of a new curriculum. In more recent years, there has been noticeable development of Education in Cambodia in the context of globalization and the use of ICT to promote eLeaning across the country and the region during this meeting of Asian eLearning Network (AEN).

The rapid expansion of basic education has resulted in major growth on Government spending for primary and lower secondary education. Per pupil spending on education in Cambodia remains at the low end of regional figures. Cambodia’s spending is roughly comparable with its Greater Mekong neighbors but well below the better off ASEAN countries. However, to simply increase education spending is not enough. Increased spending needs to complement to better efficiency, higher quality and deployment of new technology as a tool such as the internet for e-leaning or distant learning.

Since 2000 Cambodia became the 10th and last member of ASEAN communities. It has made great effort to participate with all activities as endorsed by the ASEAN Leaders and its secretariat. One of which is the creation of an eASEAN Task Force and eASEAN Working Group which have the duty to develop, according the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement, in order to provide all aspect of ICT and overall direction for all ASEAN member nations. The objective is to accelerate smooth integration in all related areas including legal frameworks, educational frame works, trade and business integration and liberalization among old and new members of ASEAN as well as within the region and the world.

One of the projects under the eASEAN Framework Agreement is the SchooNet project. Though it is still in the early stage, the SchoolNet project has begun by nominating SchoolNet coordinators and invited them to a meeting in Washington D.C. in June 2001 which followed by a fact finding visit to Phnom Penh of two World Bank representatives in may 2001. Also, it has organized awareness seminar in Phnom Penh for Cambodian 2 educators and students. Three high schools in Phnom Penh have been chosen as its pilot base. The project is supported by the World Bank under a grant from Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF).

E-learning cannot progress without and improvement on local telecommunication infrastructure and Internet development. Since 1993 Cambodia is boosting its wireless telecommunications development to the point that the number of mobile telephone subscriber exceeds fixed lines one. This development is the first record in the world. Cambodia’s teledensity of telephone subscribers reached 1 in 100 inhabitants in year 2000 which is a significant achievement for a Least Developed Country.

There are five private companies providing telecom services in Cambodia. Cambodia has the lowest Internet penetration in South East Asia (0.07 per cent) and the highest price. The complexity of computerized Khmer characters and lack of standardized scripts in computers have slow down the development of local applications for World Wide Web. Aside from these shortcomings in the ICT infrastructures; the Royal Government of Cambodia is committed to create an environment where ICT can develop quickly. In this regards, an authority for the National ICT for the Development (NiDA) was created and chaired by the Prime Minister in 2000.

Indeed, developing countries face numerous challenges as they strive to enter and successfully compete in the new global economy. Production factors of land and labor they are generally severely constrained by inadequate levels of physical and financial capital and, perhaps most important in today’s knowledge-based economies, human capital.

Human capital devlopment and quality of labor resources can be improved through investments, education, and training. Although this is fast becoming the key to success for both individuals and nations, the undertaking is expensive especially in developing countries where educational systems are often weak and under funded, and access to education and training, limited and inequitable.

Addressing this situation through traditional means particularly for developing countries will be costly and potentially ineffective. As the recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Meta-survey on the Use of Technologies in Education (2004) concluded:

More of the same is just not going to work. Building more classrooms, and training more teachers to reach those currently unreached by education systems is unrealistic and will not be enough to meet the Education for All (EFA) challenge. Some countries are already spending considerable percentages of their Gross Domestic Product on education and have little room for maneuvering. In addition, traditional education models will no doubt be unable to achieve educational empowerment effectively in the emerging Knowledge Societies.

Just as important is that traditional means of educational development will only bring education in developing countries up to a point already being left behind by education in the more advanced knowledge economies (Wedel, 2000).

e-Learning is increasingly being suggested as an alternative to, or a way to enhance, traditional educational approaches. e-Learning is the most recent evolution of distance learning – a learning situation where instructors and learners are separated by distance, time or both. e-Learning (sometimes also defined as 'Internet-enabled learning'), uses network technologies to create, foster, deliver, and facilitate learning, anytime and anywhere. Potential advantages of this approach for developing countries are clear. e-Learning can match the needs of non-traditional students, increase the educational facilities available to traditional students, provide cost-efficient yet effective training options, and give learners in developing nations an invaluable means of gaining a first world education tempered by third world experience.

Although e-Learning is increasingly being adopted in developed countries to reach both traditional and non-traditional students, it is still relatively unknown and unused as an educational approach in developing countries. Reasons for this are numerous. There is a general skepticism about the effectiveness of e-Learning as compared to more traditional approaches. It takes specialized skills and knowledge to develop and implement online courses that are not generally found in most developing country educational institutions. Internet connections and phone lines are unreliable. Bandwidth is narrow resulting in slow access to websites. Computers in general are not widely available and Internet connected computers even more so, particularly in areas outside of major urban centers. Traditional approaches to teaching and learning may also be a factor. In many developing countries, students are most familiar with a didactic approach and do not necessarily understand the instructor as a 'facilitator' rather than as a 'teacher' in the traditional sense. Added to these factors is the relative and absolute higher cost of Internet access in developing countries, most often as a result of misguided telecommunications regulations that discourage the development of Internet-access service through competition.

All of these impeding factors can certainly be found in Cambodia, one of the least developed countries in the world and now engaged in a critical effort to develop its human resources after decades of intellectual decay. In an effort to assess the potential of e-Learning as a mechanism for developing human capital in this country, a number of partners came together to implement the Provincial Business Education through the Community Information Centers (CIC) project in Cambodia. This paper is a report on the activities and results of the project and an analysis of what was learned during and after project implementation.

A Strategic Design: Lessons learned form the CIC Project

Along with Internet access and email accounts, the CICs provided students with access to a library of local language reference materials, a supportive environment to hold study groups, interact with their classmates, and face to face guidance with IT trainers to ease their introduction to online learning. Not only did students and lecturers communicate over e-mail and discussion forums, students were able to use Simultaneous Message Systems (SMS) text messaging and mobile phones to call CIC faculty if needed. Additionally, because there was often a time delay between when a student asked a question and the lecturer responded, the courses introduced an independent study pedagogy to lecturers and students, which was based on development of critical thinking skills rather than rote learning. An evaluation was conducted between the first and second “rounds” (semesters), and the Project refined to make the second semester more even successful. The evaluation showed that at least half of the students were women; indicating that women on-line learning is accepted in rural areas. An average of 80 percent of the original enrolled students successfully completed the courses they signed up for.

New Opportunities for Female Cambodian Students

A remarkable aspect of the Project was the percentage of female students who enrolled and successfully completed the courses. About 50 percent of the students were women. The Project deliberately reached out to female students when promoting the courses. Women enrolled because the opportunity to take online courses allowed them to stay with family instead of commuting or moving to Phnom Penh which is a major hindrance for women to pursue studies beyond secondary school.

Digital divide?

A key objective of the CIC project was to determine if eLearning could address the challenges associated with reaching students outside of Phnom Penh. These provincial students represent the vast majority of Cambodia’s potential learners as less than 10 percent of Cambodians live in Phnom Penh Province (Census of Cambodia, 1998). Unfortunately, almost all opportunities for higher education are available only to those willing or able to move to the capital city and few provincial students are prepared, or can afford, to leave homes, families and jobs to move to the capital for extended periods.

The project was also interested in seeing if eLearning could work given the low level of familiarity with computers and computer technology. The vast majority of Cambodian students have had very limited experience with computers. Of the 698 secondary schools, only 13% are connected to electricity, 8 percent have generators, and 4 percent have solar panels. Seventy-five percent have no power supply at all. Very few state schools have computers. Only six percent of lower-secondary schools and 35% of upper-secondary schools have between one and two computers for administrative purpose. Only eight upper-secondary schools have more than 10 computers (Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth & Sport). Computer availability is severely limited with 2.2 computers per 1,000 citizens, lower even than Papua New Guinea (13.7) and considerably behind the regional leader Malaysia (319.7) (Statistical Annexes). Additionally, Internet penetration in Cambodia is extremely limited and currently estimated at only 0.3 percent of the population with most of this access is in Phnom Penh. By comparison, similar estimates of Internet penetration for the region are 9.9 percent and for the world 23.1 percent (Internet Usage in Asia, 2005).

Overall impact

The Provincial Business Education through the Community Information Centers (CICs) project was an ambitious effort to use e-Learning to reach underserved provincial students in Cambodia with quality accredited educational opportunities in business theory and skills. Over a period of 18 months, project partners successfully delivered two 'semesters' of online business courses in Khmer language to students residing in five provinces outside Phnom Penh. Key outputs included the establishment of a distance learning program at the International Institute of Cambodia, the creation of a core group of experienced online course developers and facilitators, experienced student support personnel at the Community Information Centers, an open source Khmer language Learning Management System based on Khmer Unicode standards, and the establishment of a strong network of mutually supportive partners. Two hundred seventy two (n = 272) provincial Cambodian students took advantage of one or more of the five online courses developed under the project to improve their knowledge of key business topics and over 75% of these individuals scored sufficiently high on exams and assignments to receive accredited certification. These results strongly suggest that e-Learning can be a successful approach to providing quality higher education to underserved provincial students in Cambodia, and that this approach can open new opportunities for educational institutions to reach out to underserved women and men in Cambodia via online courses. Key factors associated with these results were that the courses met the most critical standards for success. Every attempt was made to ensure that they were easily accessible, the content was appropriate, participation was rewarded with formal accreditation and the learning was affordable.

Other contributing factors identified by students were that online learning gave added value in that eLearning allowed students to develop IT skills while also learning subject matter related business. Participation in these courses provided an opportunity to learn how to use computers and digital communication tools. This finding tends to confirm the ideas of Wedel (2000) who noted that:

A key advantage to using technology for education is that the use of technology is in itself a crucial education. Computers and the Internet are particularly suited for self-learning and for many other uses. So, for example, by learning to use the Internet to take a course in history, the student also learns language and Internet skills that will be valuable for finding international markets for local handicrafts or getting the latest crop prices on world markets.

Given that nearly half of the students were working adults, it is not surprising that a much appreciated aspect of the courses was its flexibility in allowing learners to study at the times most convenient to their schedules. Without this flexibility, many of these students would not otherwise have been able to participate in a formal learning program.

These factors, however, are not so different from what makes e-Learning work anywhere else in the world. In the context of Cambodia, and for students living outside of Phnom Penh in particular, a major factor has to be that these courses represented the only opportunity for provincial students to further their education. That they could continue their education without leaving home seemed to be an especially attractive aspect of e-Learning for provincial women learners. While women currently represent less than one third of the total population of higher education students in Cambodia nearly 50 percent of the students who registered for and participated in the online courses were women. Women definitely demonstrated their ability to learn online and scored significantly higher on tests and assignments than their male classmates.

While there are still major difficulties to overcome and much work to be done, it is maintained that the results of this project provide strong evidence that eLearning can be a powerful approach for reaching underserved men and women learners living in the country’s provinces. Perhaps the most serious impediment to more widespread adoption of eLearning will be the prohibitive cost of internet access. Survey responses showed that students would be willing to pay between US $20 to $30 for an accredited course and that they would be unwilling to pay extra for Internet access. Whether or not this level of effective demand will be economically attractive for educational institutions or if there are feasible options for providing affordable internet access is not yet known. There is definitely a real danger that, “Unless access can be subsidized, either by donors or the government through a universal access policy the full potential of online learning in Cambodia will remain underutilized” (Tweedie, 2006).

It is certainly hoped that the country will overcome this and other constraints as there is strong evidence that e-Learning can and does work in Cambodia and perhaps in other countries facing similar challenges. As stated in an article published in the United Nations Chronicle: If education and capacity-building are critical steps for entering into the new global economy, e-learning should be considered a critical facet of basic development, an alternative medium of capacity-building and a means to people's empowerment (Sehrt, 2003).

Contributed by Kheang