In the 21th century, the continuing growth
in IT has successfully encouraged global interactions and wider internet access
all around the world. This has introduced many modern means for education,
which allow people to get global information, “challenging assimilation and
assessment skills” with ease, thus making “learning … a truly lifelong
activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant
evaluation of the learning process itself” (WikiEducator, 2009). The internet
access is especially important to high school students nowadays to access to various
useful online educational resources and to hone their soft skills such as
critical thinking skill and problem solving skill. The effective usage of IT in education nurtures all-round students
who are well-equipped with knowledge and valuable skills, allowing them to have
comparative advantages to compete with others to get into better universities.
However, in Malaysia, due to the digital
divide in high school students from rural and urban areas, for example, Kuala
Lumpur, an urban area which has the highest broadband penetration rate of
119.4% and Sabah, a rural area which has the lowest broadband penetration rate
of 43.8%, high school students from rural areas have less exposure to more
information, causing them to be comparatively less competitive to get higher
education. Based on the information provided by the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP), only 5% of high school students in Sabah, a rural area in
Malaysia, pursue tertiary education (Leete, 2007). These information shows a positive correlation
between the broadband penetration rate and rate of students pursuing tertiary
education in urban and rural areas. Apart from other factors such as family
backgrounds, low incomes and others, the poor internet access in this area is
the dominant factor that results in such low enrollment to universities among
high school students in Sabah. In Malaysia, as high school students from rural
areas are comparatively less competitive than students from urban areas to have
better tertiary education as a result of disparity in the accessibility in
online educational information, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia
Commission (MCMC) should increase the actions in narrowing the digital divide
effectively by allocating more budget for increasing broadband penetration in
rural areas so that fair competition among high school students.
Nowadays, people are aware that developing
knowledge and skills is a way for an individual for securing employment and
having higher living standard. Realising the importance of education, more and
more parents in rural areas are sending their children to schools instead of
asking them to work when they are young to earn a living. This positive
phenomena has increased the percentage of youngsters who enroll in high schools
in Malaysia. However, the poor broadband penetration in high schools in rural
areas causes students to have less alternative to get more resourceful educational
information other than knowledge from textbooks, which results in the limited
exposure and knowledge received by them in school. Teachers in rural areas have
also limited teaching materials and resources due to the difficulty in
collecting useful resources online. The failure of the education institutions
to provide sufficient modern facilities such as computer rooms and multimedia
libraries also causes students to have limited means to be more knowledgeable
and do well in public examinations, in which they have to compete with students
from all states in Malaysia. The disparity in the accessibility of educational
information causes high school students from rural areas to have comparatively
lower performances in studies. Thus, they have disadvantages in competing with
high school students from urban population to get into more prestigious
universities. While the results of these public examinations is the determinant
to get into prestigious universities, high school students are often
disappointed as they cannot get into universities with their relatively bad
results.
In addition, the poverty in most of the
households rural areas in Malaysia worsens this problem. According to Leethe
(2007), the percentage of households below the poverty line in Sabah is 20%,
the highest among the states in Malaysia. Most of the families do not have
enough income for their daily life expenditures, let alone buying computers and
installing networks in their houses, which might make up a great proportion of
their annual incomes. Therefore, students do not have the access to the
internet to do research for their studies and get adequate preparation for
tertiary education at home. Unlike the high school students in urban areas who
can easily access the internet, a limitless library at one’s fingertips, to
unlock their doubts and problems in studies, the high school students in rural
areas do not have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of internet usage. For
instance, high school students in rural areas face more difficulties in improving
their English speaking skills effectively as they can barely access the
internet to watch videos or listen to recordings from websites such as Youtube.
They can depend solely on their teachers in school and have limited chances to
practice speaking in English. This scenario puts them at a distinct
disadvantage, who then understandably restrict themselves when going on to the higher
education and on the job market. As a result, high school students from urban
areas are in ascendancy over the students from rural areas to get into their
ideal universities.
To narrow the gap of internet usage between
high school students from urban and rural areas, the MCMC has allocated RM1
billion under the Universal Service Provision (USP) fund to provide poor
students from families with less than RM3000 monthly income in rural areas
computers with internet access. This program aims to achieve broadband
penetration of 75% in Malaysia by 2015 and also to encourage the usage of IT in
the community to nurture a knowledgeable society. According to the article,
“1.2 million 1Malaysia netbooks given out – ministry” (2014), to date, the MCMC
has allocated 1.68 million units of 1Malaysia netbooks to rural community.
This commission makes further effort in
building a technological society by introducing the 1Malaysia Wireless Village
or “free wi-fi” for the rural areas in 2011. Under this program, wireless
broadband will be brought to the doorsteps of small communities in remote
villages including villages in Sabah, Sarawak, Malacca and Johor. In these
places, registered users can enjoy the internet access without paying any fees.
Roszeta Kassim, the head of MCMC southern region mentions that to date, there
are 757 1Malaysia Wireless Village locations in Johor and Malacca, which are the
two of other states which benefit from this pragmatic program.
Under these 2 programmes, students from low
income families are benefiting from the computer with internet connection as
they are able to make full use of the internet to do research which is related
to their studies at home and at school. This allows them to improve in subjects
that they are poor at, for instance English, mathematics and the sciences,
which are very important in today’s world, by various means such as doing
exercises provided online, forum discussions and free webcast lectures. Besides
that, they are given the equal opportunities as high school students from urban
area to collect information of universities from all over the world. After
choosing an ideal university and understanding the prerequisites of that
university, they might be more motivated to study harder and perform better in
nation public examinations. Given the same study environment, the high school
students from cities will not have any comparative advantages anymore as the
results of students from “kampung” areas are as competitive as they are.
Also, the free internet access under the 1
Malaysia Wifi Village Programme can aide in encouraging the villagers to learn
to use internet. These villagers include students, teachers and parents. With the
skills of accessing internet, teachers can search for valuable resources to
share in class while parents can help their children in their studies by
teaching them the appropriate way to use internet access for education purposes
besides making the learning journey more interesting. With the efforts of
everyone, nurturing high school students with great exposure to the world and
information will not be a tough task in rural areas.
To bridge the digital gap between
high school students from urban areas and rural areas, the MCMC should continue
its effort. The meaningful projects should expand wider to other poor rural
areas in Malaysia so that these areas will not be isolated from the digital
world. Under these programmes, the improved study environment will strengthen
the students’ ability in doing better in studies, thus to cause the fair
competition to pursue tertiary education to arise among all high school
students in Malaysia. With more highly educated human resources in this
country, Malaysia will steadily grow and become prosperous as other developed
countries.
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