Costa Rica - Networked Learning

Networked Learning

School Access to ICT’s | Enhancing Education with ICT’s | Developing the ICT Workforce

With an estimated literacy rate in 1999 at 95.5% (CIA) and informal secondary education, which covers employer education, at 83% (International Reports), Costa Rica is a well-educated country. Unfortunately, their technical school graduates are fairly low, which will prevent the country becoming a high tech power. Using the Framework Costa Rica would barely be in stage three. The government is trying to make computers and Internet access available to everyone, but it often only readily available to the wealthy and urban citizens. There are many educational centers that offer a wide range of educational classes, but too often these classes are not taught by individuals knowledgeable enough to teach. The government is working diligently with corporations and private philanthropists to encourage and educate more citizens.

School Access to ICT’s

A way to increase the technology education of the Costa Rican pupils is to ensure they have Internet access. Unfortunately, only 5.9% of Costa Rican publics schools have Internet access. The schools that do have access are generally in the higher metropolitan areas, so the actual number of primary school students that have access is approximately 29% (Monge & Cespedes). Costa Rica is attempting to combat the low accessibility rate by creating community access centers where citizens may access the Internet (Monge & Chacon, 8).

We tried to research the computer usage and access from primary school to university. At the university level, we didn’t find any statistics, but from our research it appears that every university we found had computer labs with Internet connectivity. Some offered on-line courses and many offered different ICT related degrees.

The Omar Dengo Foundation has assisted in the connectivity of primary and high schools. This foundation is has been responsible for creating and training many of the computer labs and tutors within the country (Verdisco, 98). Certain criteria must be met, like having a minimum of 250 students and setting aside the physical space for an appropriate lab. The foundation has put a great deal of effort into training. Without proper training, the computer utility will not be fully achieved. To date, the foundation has trained over 15,000 teachers and administrators (Verdisco, 99). It is also estimated that this program has benefited more than 2 million students, the graph below illustrates by year the statistics. (Monge & Chacon, 46).

Enhancing Education with ICT’s

In an interesting and relevant study that took place between 1996 and 1998, an attempt was made to discern the usage of computers in the Costa Rican educational system and to determine if their implementation was handled in a more appropriate way than was done in Chile (Dobles). The study may be a little out dated, but since the implementation of computers and training hasn’t changed much in five years, the results should still hold true. It was found that the majority of the labs and the teaches running the labs were not focusing on the actual computer technology, but rather to enhance teaching and learning through the development of educational projects associated with other core curriculum topics (Dobles, 24). It was also found that the study participants did not have adequate access to the Internet. It was found that on average, only one computer was hooked-up to the Internet (Dobles, 25). The other computers were used in general studies at the discretion of the students. In the study, out of five instances, only one teacher was observed using a computer for educational type purposes, the lab tutor was viewed in all instances as doing computer related work (Dobles, 23). So, in this small sampling, it shows that the computers help / tutors are computer literate and use the computer as a tool to help educate the students is available, but the other not computer teachers are still on the other side of the technology divide.

Developing the ICT Workforce

Costa Rica realizes the importance of training its citizens to become computer literate. There currently is a program called "Tecnoclub," which provides computer and Internet training to low-income kids and teens that would normally not have access to the Internet or computers (Pratt). Another concept called “Communication Without Borders”, created more than 100 computer centers in libraries, municipalities, post offices and community centers (Pratt). This too has given underprivileged citizens the opportunity to learn about computers and the entire Internet has to offer. When it comes down to high school education, only 26% of the students obtain their degree in technical areas (Monge & Cespedes). As the chart below illustrates, there actually has been a decline in technical school graduates in Costa Rica High Schools (Monge & Cespedes, 92).

Type of Education	1996		1997		1998		1999		2000
	Total	%	Total	%	Total	%	Total	%	Total	%
Academic	43,688	72.04	46,172	71.62	46,204	72.71	48,247	74.72	51,716	74.03
Technical	16,955	27.96	18,300	28.38	17,343	27.29	16,327	25.28	18,149	25.97
TOTAL	60,643	100	64,472	100	63,547	100	64,574	100	69,865	100

Regarding secondary education, there are approximately 6 Junior Colleges, and 60 Public and Private Universities and 100’s or different Technical Colleges or employer training centers. While it may seem impressive, the accreditation standards are fairly weak and the qualified instructors are clearly lacking. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with the Ministry of Education has started a program to properly train educators to enable more qualified and better prepared computer professionals (Dobles). While it is a start, it hasn’t made a large impact on the graduating students. Between 1990 and 2000, only 5,500 Computing degrees were awarded, compared to 43,600 business degrees (Monge & Cespedes, 97). The bottom line is Costa Rica needs to educate more students in the area of computers. Congress has already passed a Constitutional reform mandating 6% of the GDP is spend on education (Dobles). With continued effort, the educational system could slowly improve and achieve its goals, but further programs may be necessary. It may be possible to enhance the process by pulling students into the computer field by offering computer scholarships or possibly working closer with the corporations to set educational standards as well as more corporate educational programs.