I spoke with a group of educators from Malawi yesterday. Emerging economies have different needs than established economies. Emerging countries are trying to create the structure of education...often under the umbrella of standards and best practices. As I spoke with the educators, detailing the tools I use in instructing online, I found even the most basic tools were not on their radar...but when I talked about how I try and foster interaction between students, students with content, and instructor with student, they could immediately relate. The tool (technology) enables interaction - a concept with which they were familiar.
Education systems in more advanced nations need to be retooled and restructured (i.e. in line with the nature of change at global levels...we require innovation and new approaches). Emerging countries have a different context which requires different approaches. The open education movement has particularly strong relevance in theses areas (though it could well be argued that many in Western countries fall out of the education system due to access restrictions - even where tuition is minimal, the expense of content access is prohibitive). While we are becoming a global education community, the needs of each country differ. It's challenging to present broad-based reform when some don't have access to a computer...and others are trying to figure out how to integrate online video lectures into courses. A Tectonic Shift in Global Higher Education: "The scale of change in higher education in the coming decades can be shown simply by applying the modest target of a 35 percent participation rate to the four billion people in the world's poorest countries. This would yield 150 million additional students, far more than today's global total. Undoubtedly, tens of millions of young adults in the third world will be seeking postsecondary education in the coming years."