Offline Internet for Remote Learning in Low-Resource Environments
Paul Ingiona Adie, Anthony Etta Bisong, Otu Michael Obuop · UJ Press eBooks · 2023
Offline Internet is a specially designed computer system that stores information in very large quantities for learning in low-resource regions, either by direct retrieval of information from a storage device, a Wi-Fi-enabled seeder sharing its resources with leech-computers or a device that periodically updates its local information contents whenever it goes online. The offline population faces barriers to Internet adoption spanning four categories: incentives, low incomes and affordability, user capability and infrastructure. The taxonomy of offline Internet is classified functionally under three major groupings: completely offline systems, hybridised offline systems and offline servers. The problems of offline Internet include a learning analytics challenges, what learning metric to measure, device divide, gender divide, institutional technophobia, and the need for greater local technical competency. Recommendations made include enabling offline Internet interventions to supply data on user’s learning activities for educational data mining goals, building in of learning analytics component that simulates the academic performance of users, memory retention, learner engagement and self-regulated learning, and the use of existing technological devices that are owned by the majority of the target population. Women should be necessarily included in technological interventions for remote learning, and they should be ensured of meaningful benefits from such projects; thus, schools and educators should encourage both bring-your-own-device and use-your-own-device (UYOD) initiatives as practical steps to overcoming the digital divide and a smart way to utilise digital literacy skills, and efforts should be made to expose some driven students to the technologies so that in the absence of technicians, meaningful solutions can still be realised.