Estudio De Tic´s

TICs en Educación:
Desarrollo de una metodología para evaluar impacto social y condiciones de equidad

Propuesta presentada ante el CIID – IDRC – Canadá
Abril, 2001

ICTs in Education:
Development of a methodology for the evaluation of social impact and equity conditions

Proposal presented by the Omar Dengo Foundation in Costa Rica
to IDRC – Canada, April 2001

SummaryJustification & Definition

The research proposal presented by the Omar Dengo Foundation to the IDRC – Canada, addresses a key problem for institutions working on ICTs access and appropriation, that is, the need to evaluate their diverse social impacts and the lack of an adequate conceptual framework and methodology to approach this task.

This problem has become even more relevant as investments in ICTsto promote socio-economic development intensify and become more widespread. Concern with accountability and the demand to better understand how ICTs can deliver social transformations make the absence of adequate research instruments and more qualitative evaluation methodologies an important problem that still needs to be addressed. These needs are especially relevant in projects thatspecifically focus on the empowerment of individuals and social groups and on the appropriation of the new technologies for different personal, social and productive purposes.

This is the case of the initiatives that throughout the last 14 years have been supported in Costa Rica by the Omar Dengo Foundation, the Ministry of Public Education, and other national and international institutions. Differentstudies and evaluations conducted by ODF have revealed ICTs` educational impacts and have shown areas where further research is necessary to establish, through a longitudinal study, the long term results with respect to social impact and equity conditions.

This type of study becomes more relevant since most ICTs projects in developing countries have followed a focalization strategy (i.e.telecenters and community centers) that have less widespread social impacts. Projects developed within the context of wider democratization or universalization policies—such as the ones associated to the introduction of ICTs in school systems, have been few, but today are expanding significantly. There is a growing trend towards the introduction of ICTs in education to improve learning— that is, forcapacity building purposes, not just for computer literacy purposes, which is precisely the strategy adopted by Costa Rica more than a decade ago.

Experience has proved that the successful introduction of ICTs in new contexts carries the development of conceptual and practical interfaces for working with individuals and social groups in rather unknown and unexplored areas. This often means workingwith populations that were previously excluded and that demand new forms of interaction and new approaches. These new contexts call for indicators that are sufficiently general and methodologically sensitive to capture the impacts in a variety of situations, particularly when identification of equity conditions is sought. Historically valid indicators of impact have become insufficient orinadequate.

In sum, the development of a methodology to evaluate social impact in education projects that use ICTs to bring about equity and capacity building in individuals and social groups, is today vital to:

1. Achieve an adequate understanding of the meaningful interrelations among access, use, technology appropriation and equity in development models
2. Plan, manage and verify social impactsin development projects that focus on the use of ICTs
3. Address in more systematic ways the initiatives that aim at generating agents of change that may contribute to foster equity conditions.
4. Design social policies for the introduction of ICTs at the local, national and regional level

Within this context, the general approach of the project submitted to IDRC is to develop a methodology...