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ICT for Rural Education in China: Case Studies
WANG Ying
Research Institute of Open and Distance Education, The Open University of China
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Abstract: Information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in promoting China’s rural education. This paper studies three long-term, wide-scale ICT-supported programmes: “Modern Distance Education Programme for Rural Party Cadres”, “National Science and Technology Training Programme for Farmers in the New Era”, and “One Village, One College Student”. It reports on the background and implementing body of the programme, partnerships, and ICT application with the aim of drawing up best practices in ICT for rural education of farmers. Research findings show that supported by ICT, a variety of courses at different levels can be offered and that ICT plays multiple roles in these programmes, including information network construction, learning resource development and transmission, and learning tool provision. ICT itself can be the subject matter, or it can serve as a gateway for marketing agricultural products. In applying ICT for rural education in China, great effort is made to define objectives that take into consideration the socio-economic context of the target area, understand the challenges and needs specific to rural areas, choose ICT appropriate to the users' social status, and develop strategies and activities for training.
Background
Raising the cultural level of the rural population through good rural adult education is an integral component of China’s lifelong education system; it is also a major way to solve problems concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and a way to develop the rural economy. The need to enhance rural education and favor rural areas in terms of teacher allocation and educational resources was mentioned several times in The National Outline for Long- and Medium-Term Educational Reform and Development (2010-2020). ICT plays an important role in promoting China’s rural education in view of the sparse distribution of rural villages and their relatively slow economic development. Satellite TV networks and the Internet can enable quality resource transmission and sharing with low cost and high efficiency. Therefore, it is very important that we explore models and methods of applying ICT in rural education, especially providing more educational opportunities for rural adults.
This study is based on rural education in China and uses case study as its primary research method to analyze experiences and achievements in ICT-supported rural education and identify successful models and methods of such education. Three long-term, wide-scale ICT-supported programmes in China were selected as representative cases for the study. They are the “Modern Distance Education Programme for Rural Party Cadres”, “National Science and Technology Training Programme for Farmers in the New Era”, and the “One Village, One College Student” programme. For each programme, we include a systematic introduction and analysis of its background, implementing body, application of ICT, etc. A summary of the experiences and issues in ICT for Chinese rural education is then drawn based on the cases.
Research Design
The selection of cases for this study was performed based on the principles of comprehensiveness and typicality. For comprehensiveness, the cases selected cover as many aspects of contemporary Chinese rural education as possible. For typicality, all of the cases involve ICT support, long duration and wide coverage.
In line with the above two principles and in combination with the related study on the Party and country’s rural education policies (“Make modern distance education universal for rural Party cadres”, “Strengthen job training for the transfer of surplus rural labor”, and “Train farmers with knowledge, technology and management skills in the new era”), three educational programmes geared to the needs of rural adults were selected as cases for the study. They are “Modern Distance Education Programme for Rural Party Cadres”, “National Science and Technology Training Programme for Farmers in the New Era”, and “One Village, One College Student”. Rural adult education is targeted to two main groups of people: rural community cadres (rural Party members) and ordinary farmers. Its mission is to enhance the quality of rural community leaders and farmers. Based on the trend of urbanization in China today, education for ordinary farmers can be further divided into two aspects. One is to equip surplus rural laborers with better skills to migrate to and succeed in the cities, and the other is to equip farmers who remain in the villages with better qualities to shoulder the great responsibility of building the new countryside. Therefore, based on its target recipients and objectives, China’s rural adult education can be divided into three categories: education for rural Party cadres, education to help rural laborers migrate, and education for “stay-behind” farmers. These three categories correspond exactly to the three rural adult education programmes selected for the study, which ensures the comprehensiveness of the cases selected. For simplicity, this paper refers to all of the above groups as “farmers”.
Moreover, the three programmes got started at the beginning of this century (2003) and after pilot testing were implemented nationwide. They are long term and have widespread influence, and employ many forms of ICT to improve the programme's effectiveness and efficiency, including network teaching platforms, video on demand (VOD), direct broadcast satellite (DBS) and video compact disc (VCD). These projects have played a significant role in enhancing the quality of rural Party cadres, improving farmers' skills and cultural level, and in advancing the construction of the new rural countryside. As the programmes share similarities and differences in implementing body, implementation status and use of technology, they were selected for research in order to discover implementation models for ICT in rural education and the function of ICT in rural education. Of course, these characteristics also satisfy the typicality requirement for cases selected for the study.
This study used tools such as the Internet and databases to find relevant documents from the Central government, project websites, news reports and research papers. After organizing the data, it analyzes the accomplishments, models and outstanding issues of these ICT-supported rural education projects.
Case Analysis
Case 1: Modern Distance Education Programme for Rural Party Cadres
A.Programme Background
The training of rural Party cadres is another major strategic component in the new project to strengthen the Party following the “Three Emphasis” education, the rural “learning education” initiative, and the education to maintain the advancement of the Party. It is the Communist Party of China's (CPC) strategic project to equip rural Party cadres with advanced education, raise the caliber of the cadres, strengthen the Party’s rural governance foundation, and benefit millions of farmers. For a country with a large rural area and population like China, it is also an important measure to strengthen rural management and advance the construction of new socialist rural areas. That is why the General Office of the CPC Central Committee started a pilot programme of distance education for rural Party cadres in 2003, and issued The Opinions on Modern Distance Education for Rural Party Cadres Nationwide in 2007, which summarized the pilot work and proposed expanding the offering of distance education to rural Party cadres all over the country. The training objectives of the programme are: to train rural Party members to take the lead and set the example in developing new socialist rural areas, to improve the capabilities of rural cadres as leaders, to raise the educational level of the rural population so that they become the primary agents of new socialist rural construction, and to strengthen rural community-level organizations that can provide the organizational foundation for new socialist rural construction.
B. Implementing Body
The implementing bodies of “Modern Distance Education Programme for Rural Party Cadres” are the Central Party School and the national Party school system. These schools mainly teach policy theory, laws and regulations, national defense construction, ideological and moral development, science, cultural literacy and skill training. They guide students to study and discuss major current, strategic issues at home and abroad and emphasize the Party spirit and Party principles throughout the entire education process. Leaders from the Central Committee and related central departments as well as experts on various topics are regularly invited to come and share their reports on “situations, national conditions and policies”.
C. ICT Application
Resource construction is a two-front operation, and much effort is devoted to developing resources. On the one hand, the project makes full use of existing multimedia teaching resources related to Party schools, government institutions of education, judicial, labor and social security, agriculture, culture, health, population and family planning, radio and television, press and publication, social science research, scientific associations and the army. On the other hand, new teaching resources are actively developed. Teaching resources developed through ICT include phonetics teaching programmes, instructional TV teaching programmes and computer courseware. Teaching material is transmitted through Internet-based teaching platforms and satellite.
There are four main parts to the resource transmission network: the front-end broadcasting platform, the Internet platform, the resource transmission network and rural terminals. The front-end broadcasting platform is further divided into the main front-end broadcasting platform and auxiliary front-end broadcasting platform. The main front-end broadcasting platform broadcasts to terminals in townships and government-planned villages using China Education Satellite Broadband Network (CEBSat). Based on technology available through China Education Television, the project created a dedicated satellite digital channel for rural Party cadre distance education. Streaming media, courseware, and information programmes are broadcast via Asia-Pacific Satellite 6. The auxiliary front-end broadcasting platform is based on the Central Party School's existing distance education system and technological equipment. It broadcasts programmes via SinoSat-1. The programmes can be downloaded to the websites of county-level learning centers and transmitted to computer terminal users over the Internet.