“THE CONTRIBUTION OF FIVE “TÉLÉCENTRES COMMUNAUTAIRES POLYVALENTS (TCPS)” TO CAMEROON’S RURAL SECONDARY EDUCATION”
Table of Contents
Introduction
Methodology
Selection of the TCPs
Data Collection
Self-Assessed Performance, Hours of Study and Student Motivation
Findings
The TCPs
TCP Student User Profile
Have the TCPs helped Students Improve their School Performance?
Training in Computer and the Internet Use
Computer Skills and School Performance
Better-Performing Hard-Working Students Use the Internet for School Purposes
Is there an Internet Advantage?
Conclusions and Recommendations
Works Cited
Appendix. Tables
1
Introduction
Cameroon is a country located in the heart of the Gulf of Guinea in Africa, with more than 20 million people, over one third being poor (INS, 2007).People interviewed during the preparation of the Strategy Paper Poverty Reduction, view the inability to provide decent education for their children as a manifestation of poverty. The main weaknesses of thecountry’s educational system are unequal access to education for girls and the poor, poor learning and working conditions, inadequate distribution of teachers and few textbooks and essential materials (MINEDUB, 2006). A major thrust of the education sector strategy is to improve "the quality and relevance of education provided, including the introduction of modern technology and communication into the system”.
This strategy seems difficult to implement with fixed teledensityless than 2% andInternet density 0.2% (ANTIC, 2008). Telephony services and Internet are still relatively expensiveand virtuallyinaccessible in rural areas. From a recent national survey most students complained of not having access to a computer, despite the computer courses in their program. The government has sought to improve people's access to telecommunications services and Internet, in part through a program to set up multipurpose community telecenters (TCPs) in rural areas throughout the country with public funding.At the time the research was made, thirty-four (34) TCP were established.
According to the program manager, TCPscould help improve the performance of teachers by providing access to digital resources and allow exchanges with other institutions around the world.The professional literature supports this view, (Laferiere, 1999; Karsenti, 2005; Lebrun, 2007)and suggests that Internet access can broaden the range of subject and course materials available to students and teachers. This can be especially important in rural and remote schools. ATCP may therefore impart efficiency to an educational system, by enhancing learning experiences, facilitating the acquisition of basic skills and building the capacity of teachers (Djeumeni, 2008).
In fact, learners use ICT to review lessons, access to the tests of other institutions and those of previous years, and the preparation of presentations."Dissemination of educational materials through a website or an intranet is also very popular withstudents"(Perreault, 2005). In a study conducted in 25 schools in rural and urban areas of Europe, Bert Jaap van Oelshows a positive impact on group and collaborative work, the extension of hours of study beyond stay in school, creativity, interpersonal skills, innovation, motivation and self-confidence (Oel, 2007).
The impact of ICT on educational outcomes is difficult to demonstrate (Oel, 2007) because it is not easy to isolate the impact of technologyfrom other factors. As Attenoukon(2011)points out, “ICTdoesnot automaticallyproduceapositive impact onlearner performance”.
To our knowledge, no previousstudy has tried to assess how computers and the Internet, accessible through a TCP,impact on the academic performance of rural secondary students. Thisstudy seeks to help fill this gap.
Methodology
Selection of the suitableTCPs
To be able to detect impacts on education, a TCP had to have: i. reliableInternet access; ii.reliableequipment and energy supply; iii. been in operation for at least 3 years; iv. a significant number of students and teachers as customers (or, as a proxy indicator, a large proportion of young people age 25 years or less as customers); and v. initiatives in place to support of education, with some services specifically designed for students and teachers.
Among Cameroon’s 34 functional TCPs, only 18 were found to have access to the Internet. And only five met the five criteria deemed essential for the conduct of this study :Bangang, Ambam, Makenene, Bankim, Jakiri[1] (Table 1).
Data Collection
Complete data gathered over a one-month period (November 8th to December 8th, 2010) on1015 students. All students attending secondary schools entering each one of the TCP during this period were surveyed. The interviewers chosen are local residents and employees of the TCP, and are known to the respondents and this facilitated data collection.
The student questionnaire gathered basic demographic information, about the student’s school performance in the past three years and other school-related variables, the level of computer and Internet literacy and previous training, the frequency of visits and activities engaged in while visiting the TCP, and a final section on personal objectives and direct inquiries regarding the perceived impact of the TCP.
Self-Assessed Performance, Hours of Study and Student Motivation
Students were asked to assess whether their academic achievement over the past three years had been on the decline, remained stable or risen. This is a not an objective measure of school performance. It is a self-assessment requiring memory recall over a three-year period and is subject to error. The student’s response may also be biased towards his or her most recent school performance experience, i.e. last year, as opposed to 3 years ago,and tend to have an upward optimistic bias (Pearson, Ross and Dawes1992).
In practice, student responses may have an overall upward bias. Only about 13% estimated their 3-year performance as falling, about half (53%) as stable and nearly a third as rising. With slight variations, this pattern holds regardless of level (Table4).
To assess, indirectly, the reliability of the school-performance measure, we examined its correlation with two variables known to be positively correlated with school performance: the student’s motivation ((Fyans and Maehr 1987, Zimmerman 1990, Broussard 2002) and hours of study (Duckworth and Seligman 2005, Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner 2007).
Even though an imperfect measure, self-assessments of school performance over the past 3-years appear to reflect school performance of the students in our sample.When students were asked if “acquiring knowledge to succeed in school” was one of their goals nearly all (979) said yes. When they were next asked to rate the importance they attached to this goal, responses were more telling: 44% marked “very”, 32% “medium” and 1.5% “weak”. Table 5 shows the number of students who identified acquiring knowledge to succeed in school as a “very” important goal, distributed according to their self-assessment of performance. Considering the three secondary school levels jointly, students who had “acquiring knowledge…” as a very important goal represent 53% of those with falling performance; 57%, of those with stable performance, and 75% of those with “rising” performance. This correlation holds for the three secondary school levels considered.
Hours of study are also positively correlated with self-performance assessments in our sample. For every school level and for men as well as women, those with a “rising” performance rating, also reported spending the most time studying outside the classroom, while those with a “falling” performance studied the least (Table 6),
Findings
The TCPs
The five TCPs chosen for study are located in Bangang, Ambam, Makenene, Bankim, and Jakiri. In all five sites, the TCP is the only point of access to the Internet. The TCPs are located in rural areas, but mostly in the urban core or the administrative seat of local government. Each TCP is equipped with enough hardware to meet the needs of (students) users. Installed software, free or proprietary, are mainly word processing, spreadsheets and to a lesser extent translation software.The TCP typically offers the following services: training in the use of computers and the Internet, telephony, office stationery, faxing, photocopying, features and video editing. A summary profile is given in Table 1.
The average number of customers varies from 20 to 30 per day and is constantly increasing, particularly on account of communication campaigns organized by managers.Users of age less or equal 25 years represent at least 55% of TCP clients.
The computers in the 5 TCPs were found in good working order at the time of our survey.
TCP StudentUser Profile
Overall there are 55.4% of males vs. 45% of females in the sample. The gender distribution is fairly even,and all age groups -10 to 16 - are represented, but two thirds in the sample are 16 years or older (Table 3) and fewer than 4% are younger than 12.
Cameroon’s secondary education lasts about 7 years and may be divided into three stages, depending on whether pupils have not yet passed the BECP/CAP exam (Lower Level), are in between the BEPC/CAP and the Probatoire (Mid Level) exams or have obtained the Probatoire diploma and are in their final year of secondary school (Upper Level). Fewer students are generally found in the Upper level, which lasts only about a year. In our sample one in five students are in this group. The remaining students are in the Mid (42%) and Lower (37%) levels (Table 3). The distribution of the sample by school level is uneven.
The sample distribution by secondary level in the various TCPs is uneven. There are fewer Upper level students in the 5 TCPs. Lower secondary students are numerically more important than Mid level students in TCPs 1, 2 and 4, but the relationship is reversed in TCPs 3 and 5. The most striking differences are in the digital skills of interviewees. Ninety nine percent of the students in TCP2 were computer literate and 92% had Internet skills. At the other extreme, from TCP3, which only has 4 computers (Table 1), there were only 29% computer literate students and only 25% with Internet skills.
Have the TCPs helped Students Improve their School Performance?
TCPs appear to have helped some students improvetheir school performance.A larger proportion of rising performers access the net and make use of Word processing, view and download textbooks, and prepare schoolwork, than stable performers; and a greater proportion of stable performers carry out these activities compared to falling performers. The TCP has also helped a greater proportion of rising performers become more confident and better informed than is the case for the other two groups.
Falling / Stable / RisingNumber in group: / 131 / 539 / 345
Most popular TCP activities:*
Photocopy / 64.9 / 68.1 / 77.1
Internet access / 40.5 / 46.8 / 63.2
Word processing / 35.9 / 34.0 / 41.7
Printing / 28.2 / 29.9 / 31.3
Telephone / 26.0 / 27.1 / 28.7
School related activities in TCP:
View / get textbooks / 20.6 / 24.9 / 34.2
Prepare for exams, homework, etc. / 67.2 / 68.3 / 76.2
Communicate with teachers / 10.3 / 13.0 / 8.3
Has TCP helped you become:
more confident? / 51.1 / 60.9 / 71.0
better informed? / 58.0 / 70.1 / 78.0
* Each student was asked to select three TCP activities. (Full list in Table 10)
Students were also asked to identify the primary means they use to improve their school performance and were given four options: the TCP, studying in groups, approaching and working with teachers, and consulting books. The most popular response (40%) was approaching and working with teachers. The TCP (Table 11) was ranked second and chosen by 28% of the students. Studying in groups and consulting books, tied in third place, and chosen in each case by 15% of the students.
Training in Computer and the Internet Use
Nearly 60% of all students learn how to use computers in schools (Table 7). The TCPs provide an important complementary computer training service; especially if we consider those who learn from TCP organized training (17%) as well as those who teach themselves how to use computers while visiting the TCP(9%). TCP organized training is for a fee. Some students learn computers at private institutions.
Since TCPs are the only place of Internet connection in their localities, they play a critical role training students how to use the Internet (Table 8). TCP training and self-training at the TCP respectively account for 51% and 17% of students who have Internet skills. Private training institutions play a secondary but important training role (19%).
Computer Skills and School Performance
Three quarters of secondary students had computer skills and nearly two thirds (63%) know how to use the Internet. Less than a third (28%) have computers at home.Tables 9 and 10 show the differences in self-assessed school performance depending on whether they had computers andInternet skills. A higher proportion of students with rising performance had computer skills (75%) than among those withstable (66%) or falling performance (66%).
Computer skills are practically a requirement for Internet use. Of the 553 students who said they have Computer skills, 96% indicated they also know how to use the Internet.
Better-Performing Hard-Working Students Use the Internet for School Purposes
A higher proportion of students with rising performance had Internet skills (63%) thanamong stable performers (51%; Table10), and the latter proportion is higher than among students with falling performance (44%). This performance advantage ismore pronounced at the upper and mid secondary school levels (Table 10). Internet access is the TCP service used by the largest proportion of rising performers (63%) than by stable (47%) or falling (40.5%) performers.Falling performers visit the TCP less frequently and their visits are shorter than those of stable or rising performers.
Use of the Internet seems to account for the performance difference. Except for activities that do not require use of the Internet,like word processing, printing and photocopying, a larger proportion of students with Internet skills use the TCP in school related activities than among those who do not. The TCPs also seem to help students overcome the scarcity of textbooks that is common in Cameroon’s rural communities. About 40% of students who know how to use the Internet, go to the TCP to view or download school related materials.
Knows Internet?Yes / No
Number in group: / 553 / 462
Most popular of TCP activities:*
Photocopy / 50 / 69
Internet access / 75 / 24
Word processing / 31 / 44
Printing / 20 / 42
Telephone / 33 / 21
School related activities**:
View / get textbooks / 40 / 12
Prepare for exams, homework, etc. / 84 / 55
Communicate with teachers / 8 / 3
Has TCP helped you become:
more confident? / 83 / 40
better informed? / 90 / 49
* Each student was asked to select three activities when visiting TCP
** School related activities students engage in when visiting TCP
Students who lack Internet skills visit the TCP less frequently and their visits are shorter (Table 13). Few of them access the Internet (25%) compared to studentswho are comfortable with the technology (74.5%; Table 13),
Students who do not know how to use theInternet may have a stellar academic performance, and those who know the technology can falter. But the Internet seems to give students an edge. Rising performers account for 39% of those who know the technology, but only 28% of those who do not (Table 13). This correlation between a rising performance and Internet skills is also observed in four of the five TCP’s studied.
The possession of Internet skills isalso correlated with the amount of time that students spend studying after school(Table 15). The proportion of Internet savvy students who study less than 3 hours a week is 27%, 49.5% among those who study 3-5 hours, and 75.6% among students who study more than 5 hours a week. This correlation holds for all effort and secondary school levels (Table 15).
Is there an InternetAdvantage?
Does knowing how to use the Internet confera school performance advantage, beyond the effect that a student’s study effort makes?
To test this hypothesis weestimated three separate models for each secondary school level. Our focusis on the probability that a student is a rising performer, a dichotomous dependent variable that takes a value of 1 if the student self-assessed his or her performance as rising, and zero otherwise. We posit that this probability may be determined by a student’s Age, Motivation (i.e. if learning is a very important goal or not), Computer skills, Internet Skills, Hours of Study, Hours of TCP Use. The substantial differences in academic requirements justify separate models by secondary school level, and we includefour dummy variables in each model to capture differences fromattending one or another venue. The results are presented in Tables16a through 16c.
Age does not make much difference, except at the lower level. Perhaps being a student 16 years or older at this level, reflects performance limitations that are not otherwise captured.
Attending one TCP or another makes a positive and significant difference for lower level students interviewed in TCP5, and for Mid level students interviewed in TCP3 and TCP4. Underlying these differences are localized factors about which we have little information.
The single most important determinant of a rising school performance is the number of hours that a student spends studying outside the classroom. The corresponding coefficient is statistically significant in all 3 models. Being motivated to learn also contributes to a rising performance, with significant coefficients in the Mid and Upper level models.
Knowing how to use computers has a positive sign in all 3 models, but these are not statistically significant, perhaps due to insufficient variability within the sample.
Having Internet skills makes a statistically significant difference in the Mid and Upper level models. In the lower level such skills seem to produce a negative effect, although the negative coefficient is significant only at a 12% probability level. That it should be Upper and Mid Level students that benefit makes sense. It is at higher educational levels that texts and assignments are most advanced yet accessible from the Internet. Also, perhaps, younger students, even if they “know how to use the Internet”, have not yet developed the skills to use it effectively for school purposes.
Spending too much time at the TCP seems to be counterproductive. The coefficients for spending three hours or more per visit are negative in all three models. For Mid level students, spending even 2-3 hours hasa negative and statistically significant effect, and spending more than 3 hours will further diminish the prospects of a rising performance.