Youth As Researchers

Greetings from the University of Canberra, where

Dr Mark Brennan, UNESCO Chair in Community, Leadership, and Youth Development, and Professor of Leadership and Community Development at Pennsylvania State University, isspeaking on "Opportunities for Research Innovation and Expansion through Youth-led Research". He started by pointing out that "More than one-half of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years, and over a third is under 15." He described "a youth-led research program, which engages youth in topics of concern to them and their communities.

The curriculum materials for the "Youth as Researchers" program are available free online from Pen State University (but no online course):

•  Youth As Researchers Training Manual
•  Youth as Researchers Workbook

However, the concentrations of young people are in poorer countries in South America, the Middle East and Asia, while the curriculum materials have been developed and tested in the USA and Ireland. This appears to be as much an exercise in promoting the value of Social Science in western universities as in helping young people in developing countries.

Australian Virtual Colombo Plan helped fund the African Virtual University

In looking at research on international distance education I stumbled across the "Virtual Colombo Plan" (VCP). This which was a $230M Australian Government/World Bank initiative from 2001 to 2006, to fund on-line education for developing nations (Curtain, 2004 and McCawley, Henry and Zurstrassen, 2002). The VCP ended in 2006 with little ceremony, but it did help fund the African Virtual University, which continues today (Wolff, p.25, 2002).

The original "Colombo Plan" was a cold war era multi-nation effort to combat the rise of communism, through education and scientific aid to developing nations. Australia funded students from developing nations at Australian universities. The Australian Government later again appropriated the "Colombo Plan" name for its own national program, in the form of the "New Colombo Plan" in 2013. The New Colombo Plan reverses the approach of the old, sending Australian university students to nations in the region, as part of their education.

Also, the Australian Academic Research Network (AARnet), in a submission to the Australian Government  Draft National Strategy for International Education, proposed a “Digital Colombo Plan". This was similar in aim to the Virtual Colombo Plan, to provide high speed broadband to universities in developing countries in the Pacific to improve education, participially for on-line courses from Australia. The proposal was not adopted.

References

Curtain, R. (2004). Information and communications technologies and development: Help or hindrance. AusAID Virtual Colombo Plan. Retrieved from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN014679.pdf

McCawley, P., Henry, D., & Zurstrassen, M. (2002, March). The Virtual Colombo Plan: Addressing the ICT Revolution. In Global Summit of Online Knowledge Networks Conference, Adelaide, Australia (pp. 4-5). Retrieved from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan007799.pdf

Wolff, L. (2002). The African Virtual University: the challenge of higher education development in sub-Saharan Africa. TechKnowLogia, International Journal of Technologies for the Advancement of Knowledge and Learning, 4(2). Retrieved from http://www.techknowlogia.org/TKL_Articles/PDF/384.pdf

Will Education Stop Corruption in Developing Countries?

Dr Grant Walton will speak on "Is education a silver bullet for solving corruption in developing countries?" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 1pm, 1 October 2015.

ps: It seems to me that education is unlikely to stop corruption. In Australia there is a growing scandal over higher eduction providers selling unsuitable courses knowing that the Federal Government will foot the bill through the VET FEE-HELP scheme. Before Australia suggests that education can be used to combat corruption in other countries, I suggest it needs to clean up this corruption in its own education system.