Locally Relevant Curriculum In Poor
Countries: A Collective Adaptive
Approach
JORN ALTMANN
LYNN ILON
Seoul National
University
Jorn Altmann is an Associate Professor in the College of Engineering
and Seoul National University. He has worked as a Senior
Scientist at Hewlett-Packard Labs and on international research
projects about pricing of network services. Dr. Altmann's current
research centers on the economics of Internet services and
Internet infrastructures, integrating economic models into
distributed systems. He also served on several European, US
American (National Science Foundation), and national panels for
evaluating research proposals and research projects on next
generation networks and emerging technologies.
Lynn Ilon is a Full Professor in the College of Education at Seoul
National University. With degrees in Economics, Education and
Anthropology, she specializes in the knowledge economics of
learning. She has spent 30 years working in poor countries,
lecturing and consulting for the World Bank, Harvard University,
the United Nations, Educational Testing Service, the U.S. Agency
for International Development among others. Dr. Ilon has lived in
five regions of the world and worked in over 20 countries. She
has headed and worked on projects in poor countries worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Challenge
• Bring high quality higher education to
poor countries
• Quality content means making education
relevant to the society and lives of the
people
• Use knowledge economics to reduce
costs of higher education
• Use collective adaptive system to build
curriculum
• Use local strengths to build local content
and increase development prospects
African higher
education has never
been relevant to the
local situation and
was never designed
to be relevant
“even the well-read Africanist or sociologist is struck
by how little has changed in the field of educational
development in Africa since the turn of the twentieth
century. Countries throughout Africa are still
struggling to find a balance between curricula that are
culturally relevant and that prepare students to
participate in larger, global settings. And all over (or
under) this problematic issue is the colonial legacy.”
Bob White, (1996) “Talk about School: Education and the Colonial Project in French and
British Africa, (1860-1960)”. Comparative Education, 32(1):9-25.
Resources for building
curriculum locally and
for quality curriculum
delivery are a
fundamental constraint
to expanding local
higher education access
in Africa
“About 86% of the lecturers surveyed
indicated that they rarely found materials
relevant to their information needs. Only
3% of the lecturers said they found the
materials needed for their work in the
library, whilst 3% indicated they never
found anything in the library.”
Muyoueta Simui and Christine Kanyengo, (2001), “Financing
Of University Libraries In Zambia,” Lusaka, Association Of
African Universities.
Disorganized, high
quality global
content on the web
Collective/Adaptive
System for Building
Curriculum
Local
Expert
Lectures
Student analysis
becomes new
content
Local
documents
& data
The proposed
collective adaptive
system will organize
both local and global
content into high
quality curriculum
for delivery in poor
countries
Local GKI
Environment
Community
Data
P
Syllabus 1
Syllabus 2
•People can add modules at any time and
connect to existing content on the web or
content submitted by local sources.
•Modules can be revised as new content
appears.
•Syllabi are easy to update and include new,
fresh material.
Syllabus 3
Various types of content;
videos, web pages,
articles, blogs, etc.
Module
Collective/Adaptive Possibilities
• Diverse module authorship means that multilateral agencies
(World Bank, Donors, NGOs, professors, graduate students,
countries, social movements, BBC, CNN and existing content
providers) compete to get their views and content into
modules
• Diverse views compete to make modules appealing to be
included into syllabi worldwide
• Module authors are thus rewarded to keep content fresh,
dynamic, appealing
• Increasing local content from around the world bring local
voices into global curriculum
• Potential for adding local views into global classrooms
Research Questions
• How can an accreditation system for local higher education
systems be incorporated? [must validate syllabi as deriving from valid sources; current
design links modules and syllabi to credentials but this is not a complete system for online
accreditation of system]
• How can system provide ability for users to link to other
modules and syllabi where they see conceptual, ideological or
content connections? [current system allows for non-author to make comments which
includes a hyper-link, but this is very awkward system].
• Should modules in which there is disagreement on content
allow for non-authors to change, suggest modifications or
simply build competing modules?
• Who is allowed to submit modules?
• How can credentials be validated? [One suggestion is to have local institutions
validate authors for a small fee.]
• Likely, a second-level of creativity is the creation of syllabi.
Can a second collective-adaptive system of syllabi creation be
designed at a later stage? Who is owner of syllabi? Can the
syllabi be stored in the system?