Internet Use by Australian School Students

Goodwin, K. (2016) interviewed just over one thousand parents in Australia on their children's use of the Internet for learning. Half were from capital cities, half with primary school age children and half secondary school. Three quarters of parents said that Internet at home helped children learn. About half said their children use the Internet at home for research, watch tutorials and collaborate with other students.

The research was commissioned by NBN Co, an Australian government owned company set up to provide a national broadband network. NBN Co obviously have an interest in talking up the value of digital technology for education. In particular the interview questions appear to have been designed to support the assertion that high speed broadband is needed at home to provide video for education. No questions appear to have been asked about the need to provide Internet for students outside the home.

It should be noted that NBN Co is providing high speed broadband, which is far in excess of the speed required just for educational video. The ABS (2015) notes that the OECD definition of broadband used by the Australian government is 256kbps. In contrast the minimum speed being offered by NBN Co. is 20 Mbps, more than seventy five times the OECD minimum and many times the speed required for educational video.

NBN Co. is only providing fixed broadband for homes and small businesses, it is not providing mobile wireless data, as used by smart phones and tablet computers outside the home. Mobile devices equipped with 3G and 4G wireless modems might render NBCo's multi-billion dollar fiber and fixed wireless network obsolete before it can be completed.

For comparison, Pegrum, Oakley and Faulkner (2013) report on the adoption of mobile devices in ten Western Australian non-government schools in 2011. iPads were most popular, followed by iPod Touches (a small tablet device) and iPhones. Lower level classes had shared devices in the classroom, while older students each had their own device. M-learning, was still being integrated into the teaching.

Pegrum, Oakley and Faulkner (2013) identify professional development (PD) for teachers in the educational use of computers as a major need. One program set up to provide PD is the CSER Digital Technologies MOOC (Falkner, Vivian & Falkner, 2015). This is a series of free on-line courses from the University of Adelaide to teach about the new Australian Digital Technologies curriculum. The course is initially being offered for teaching in Kindergarten to year six (K-6) but is being expanded to cover later years.

Teaching digital technology to teachers on-line is challenging. (Falkner, Vivian & Falkner, p. 66, 2015) note that the average Australian primary  teacher is a 42 year old generalist (secondary teachers are a few years older). These teachers are likely to have had minimal exposure to computers in their teacher training. Teachers are reportedly working 46 hours per week and 8 to 9 days a year on PD. Asking teachers to spend extra time to use IT to learn to use IT to teach IT is a challenge. CSER prepared seven MOOC Modules:

1. Introduction
2. Data – Patterns & Play
3. Data - Representation
4. Digital Systems
5. Information Systems
6. Algorithms & Programming
7. Visual Programming

Falkner, Vivian an Falkner (p. 68, 2015) report that the first offering of the course had 1378 enrolled, 438 of who did not engage in the course and 99 completed. This is a 7.2% completion rate (10.5% of those encouraging), which is reasonable for a MOOC. The same course, offered with a tutor as a conventional e-learning course may be expected to have a much higher completion rate.

References

ABS. (2015, May). Discussion Paper: Consultation on topics emerging from submissions to the Information and Communication Technology Statistics Review, Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uyH8X-8-ieoJ:www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/Lookup/8179.0.55.002Main%2BFeatures3May%2B2015+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Falkner, K., Vivian, R., & Falkner, N. (2015, January). Teaching Computational Thinking in K-6: The CSER Digital Technologies MOOC. In Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) (Vol. 27, p. 30). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rebecca_Vivian/publication/277022717_Teaching_Computational_Thinking_in_K-6_The_CSER_Digital_Technologies_MOOC/links/556000e308ae6f4dcc9273e9.pdf

 

Goodwin, K. (2016). nbn Digital Parenting Report, NBN Co. Retrieved from  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6oyb4klf9k5k8wy/AAANBdLx0ZuuLzriOBOolPIUa/nbn%20Digital%20Parenting%20Report.pdf?dl=0

 

Pegrum, M., Oakley, G., & Faulkner, R. (2013). Schools going mobile: A study of the adoption of mobile handheld technologies in Western Australian independent schools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(1). Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/viewFile/64/25

Additional NBN Satellite Allocation for Adult Distance Education?

NBN Co have announced that rural and regional users of its new "Sky Muster" satellite will receive an increased allocation of 75GB a month (up from 20GB). Also it is planned for distance education students to receive an additional 50GB each (for up to three students per location). However, the NBN announcement refers to "children who rely on satellite for the delivery of distance education programs" (from "Broadband satellite data boost", NBN Co, 14 December 2015, emphasis added). It is not clear if adult students will be eligible for the additional allocation when undertaking school, VET, or university distance education.

New NBN Satellite for Education

Bandwidth for education is an issue in the national press in Australia this week. The first of two satellites (the first named "Sky Muster"), costing the government $500M each, has been launched to supply broadband to remote communities. But already there is worry the system will become quickly overloaded. The government had considered adding third satellite, but a 2014 review determined it would not be used to capacity.

Two satellites will provide 135 Gbps down and 40 Gbps up, shared by about 200,000 ground-stations (Gregory, 2015).

The current interim satellite system has become overloaded, with each customer reduced from 100 gigabytes (GB) a month to 45 gigabytes. As a news item points out (Courtney, 2015) this has to be shared by all students at one location. So five students would only get 9 GB each.

The Australian Government estimates that "... a typical distance education student will download 15 to 20 gigabytes (GB) of data in a month" (Fletcher, 2015). I was not able to find the original research this figure was based on.

I suggest there are many similarities between the bandwidth issue for satellite and mobile users. Also some of the satellite users will be using a mobile device for access, with the signal relayed from the satellite ground station to a mobile device, using WiFi or a mobile phone base station (as far as I know this satellite is not designed for hand-held sat-phones).

Providing efficiently encoded educational materials and services might suit both mobile and satellite users. Rather than have three versions of the interface and content: one for satellite users, one for mobile and one for desktop, it should be possible to use the one for all.

Has anyone estimated what bandwidth is needed for a typical Australian distance education university student? I suspect it is much less than the 15 GB estimate.

Perhaps the NBN system needs a way the consumer can reserve capacity for different uses.  For example, an amount could be reserved per month for educational purposes.

Where bandwidth is limited or access intermittent, technical means, such as caching, can be used to reduce dependence on the network. Also the educational material can be designed to reduce dependence on the network. As an example, a classic distance education design can be used. With this the student receives a package of materials at the start of a course (traditionally a "reading brick" but now an e-book, or SCORM package). This provides all the materials the student needs for an entire semester. The course materials also include a study plan for the student to work through. The student completes exercises and sends in their work for assessment.

This Distance Education approach did not have a high completion rate in the days of paper mail. But with e-learning the student can be sent short nudges to help them work. These consist of short postings every week or few days from a human tutor (or from automated reminders programmed into the course). Where bandwidth is limited these postings can be a few hundred characters of text sent by the Learning Management System (or an SMS message, or email), with a link to the relevant section of the course notes. Students are prompted to respond. This greatly increases the sense of involvement by the students.

If there is sufficient capacity, students can have an on-line discussion of the course by text forum. If there is sufficient capacity, this can be supplemented by audio and video. However, audio and video place much higher demands on the network and research shows that they do not greatly increase student educational outcomes, over text based communication.

References

Courtney, P. (2015, October 1). Rural communities fear 'data drought' for 18 months despite launch of NBN satellite Sky Muster. Australian Broadcasting Commission. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-01/rural-internet-customers-battling-data-drought-despite-satellite/6819908

Fletcher, P. (2015, May 19). CommsDay Satellite Summit: 'Putting satellite to its highest value uses'. Office of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications. Retrieved from http://www.minister.communications.gov.au/paul_fletcher/speeches/commsday_satellite_summit_putting_satellite_to_its_highest_value_uses

Gregory, M. (2015, October 2). Sky Muster a small step forward for NBN, Australian Business Review. Retrieved from
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/10/2/technology/sky-muster-small-step-forward-nbn

Correction (4 October 2015):

As originally posted, I wrote that there were to be three NBN satellites all named 'Sky Muster'. Tailgator pointed out (October 3, 2015 at 12:40 PM) "... there are only two satellites being launched... the name - is not generic for both Satellites ...". I have corrected both errors.

Plans for a third satellite were dropped after a 2014 review. It was not expected a third satellite would be fully used (which I think will turn out to have not been a good decision):

"The Review estimates that only of the capacity of a third satellite would be utilised. The remaining capacity could then be commercialised, either by NBN Co or a third party. However, there are limited opportunities for NBN Co to monetise the spare capacity in its third satellite, as the majority of bandwidth supply is unlikely to be met with significant market demand from potential corporate end-users. This scenario also reduces the need for base stations and therefore reduces long term operating expenditure". From page 90, NBN Fixed Wireless and Satellite Review Report, NBN Co, May 2014

Of course some user education and custom browser configuration should be able to at least double the effective capacity of the two satellites, for a fraction of the cost of the third.

Deadly Mob Learning

The Australia's "National Broadband Network" (NBN) will cost more than $30B, but may may increase inequity of access, particularly for education in remote indigenous communities.

The NBN is planned to use fibre optic and hybrid cable to households in the city, fixed terrestrial wireless in regional areas and satellite broadband in remote areas.  But if applications are developed for the higher speed urban part of the network, they may not work as well (or at all) on the remote satellite service, or on wireless mobile devices.

Education was envisaged as one use for the NBN. But the NBN was designed on the assumption that the primary use of the Internet would be in the home (even the wireless part of the NBN is fixed, not mobile). If users are mobile, then the network may be of little use. In particular this will disadvantage remote indigenous communities, which already have limited access to services, including education.

Philip Townsend at Flinders University of South Australia, is researching connecting remote groups of teachers together for education with mobile devices, or deadly mob learning ("high quality group learning" in Australian Aboriginal English):

1. Guenther, J., McRae-Williams, E., & Townsend, P. (2012). Can m-and e-learning support pathways for meaningful vocation in remote communities?. AVETRA 15th Annual Conference. The Value and Voice of VET Research for individuals, industry, community and the nation, Rydges Capital Hill, ACT Retrieved July. Retrieved from http://www.crc-rep.com.au/resource/AVETRA2012_GuentherAndMcRae-Williams_Paper59.pdf
2. Townsend, P. (2014). Deadly Remote Teacher Education by Mobile Devices. Retrieved from https://acec2014.acce.edu.au/sites/2014/files/attachments/ACEC2014%20Philip%20Townsend,%20Deadly%20remote%20teacher%20education%20by%20mobile%20devices_0.docx
3. Townsend, P. (2014). Mobile Learning Engagement is Location Neutral. Transactions on Mobile Learning, 5. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philip_Townsend2/publication/269932389_Mobile_Learning_Engagement_is_Location_Neutral/links/549a273e0cf2fedbc30cb24e.pdf
4. Townsend, P. B. (2015). Mob learning-digital communities for remote aboriginal and Torres strait islander tertiary students. Journal of Economic & Social Policy, 17(2), 20. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/13856418/Mob_Learning_-_Digital_Communities_for_Remote_Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Tertiary_Students

How Much Internet Does an On-line Student Need?

Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas has expressed concern about the adequacy of the NBN ISS (Australian National Broadband Network Interim Satellite Service). Providing broadband in remote areas could be a boon for education. But what speed, latency and amount of data is needed by a student and does the NBN ISS provide this?

This is a sensitive political issue because the NBN ISS is intended to provide broadband Internet access to remote areas. These are areas which have limited educational facilities and so one obvious use of the NBN is to provide education. Also there are indigenous communities in remote areas and the adequacy of provision of services to these areas is in question.

Is the NBN ISS capable of providing an adequate service for remote students? In particular is this adequate for remote indigenous students, including teacher training?

If not managed well, the introduction of the NBN may increase disadvantage for those outside the cities. If city students have access to large amounts of high speed, low latency broadband, then educators are likely to design their on-line courses for this service. These courses may then not work on limited regional networks. In contrast, if the courses are designed for the limitations of the remote service they will still work in the city.