Sujata Gamage, Senior Research Fellow explores the question of how civil society can make use of opportunities for deeper engagement in policy-making. 
Sujata Gamage, Senior Research Fellow explores the question of how civil society can make use of opportunities for deeper engagement in policy-making.
The new normal for education would necessarily involve a heightened awareness of and a focus on sanitation and social distancing. Will the new normal include transformative use of ICTs for learning? Our research shows that it depends on how well policymakers learn from the experience of organically formed teacher-parent-student networks in using ICTs for teaching at a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Use of ICT for teaching is different from the use of ICTs for learning. Teachers have been increasingly using multi-media, e-blackboards, learning management systems and student management systems for efficiencies in teaching, but the effectiveness of teaching is in the learning experienced by students.
COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown found educators in Sri Lanka scrambling to connect with their students, and hence the state of internet connectivity of families with children was a crucial piece of data that policymakers needed. In response, LIRNEasia’s survey research team re-analyzed their 2018 AfterAccess dataset with a focus on households with children under 18. Ayesha Zainudeen and Tharaka Amarasinghe presented their analysis at a policy dialogue by the Education Forum Sri Lanka (EFSL) on “Access to distance education for children Lanka”. EFSL is the advocacy partner in LIRNEasia’s Education for the Future themed research. As Ayesha and Tharaka note, results for families with children parallel the results for all households, with 48% of households with children owning a smartphone or other device for accessing the Internet, but only 34% could access the internet.
When faced with complex issues, education issues, for example, it is tempting to come up with a hundred and one things one might do to fix. That is a mistake. Unless we identify a few pivotal changes that will lead to positive repercussions across the education sector, we will be lost in detail.
Presented by Dr. Sujata Gamage at Forum for business Innovations, NIBM National Innovation Center on March 01, 2019
How well equipped is the future workforce to face the uncertainties brought about by digital platforms and other emerging technologies such as AI, robotics and 3-D printing?
Readiness of School Leavers for the Workplace of the Future. Sujata N Gamage, LIRNEasia. September 2018
Ethnic issues continue to provide the sub text for a presidential election scheduled for the eighth of January 2015. At this point on the dawn on 2015 it is appropriate to recall that one issue that was pivotal in setting off the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka was access to public higher education. Forty years later, the education landscape has seen much change. Urban youth, irrespective of racial divide seem to be moving on, taking advantage of new opportunities, while our rural youth are still stuck in the “school to government university to government job” paradigm. The real division among us is not about race or about who love this country most, but, it is about those who are able to exploit opportunities of a knowledge economy and those who are unable.
Recent budget announcement by President Rajapakse places high value on increasing higher education enrollments. Is this the right approach as Sri Lanka aspires to be a hub in the knowledge economy which requires an information savvy society? Information society indicators are limited by the type and quality of data that international agencies can collect. Not surprisingly, enrollment rates at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education take the center place in knowledge society /economy indicators. There are at least three big gaps in these indicators.
Big data is getting bigger. It has moved from limited use by retailers such as amazon.com or wallmart and others analysing customer behaviour to just about every sector. Scientists have always crunched large amounts of data. The genomes of species and repositories of chemical structures and properties are two sources of big data for scientists.
The availability massive data bases and the ability to mine those has opened possibilities of data-based research to understand social phenomena, but social science in its present form in the developing world may not be able to meet the challenge. While the clamour for open data and open science/social science should continue no doubt , equal attention should be paid to the demand side, the demand –side for social data. Do traditional university departments and think tanks devoted to social science and media have the capacity to use such data? Do traditional media which have the responsibility to bring the research to the public sphere have the capacity to do so? This lacuna was highlighted in the Round Table on Consultation on Science and Social Science Research organized by the Centre for Culture Media and Governance of the Jamia Millia Islamia University and Canada’s IDRC during 25-26 November, 2013.
A study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the International Telecommunication Union, and published on Oct 7, shows that only 30 percent of people ages 15 to 24 have spent at least five years actively using the Internet, the criterion used to define digital nativism. As expected, more than 90 percent of young people in high-income countries are considered digital natives, with South Korea leading the way at 99.6 percent. But many low income countries lag far behind with an average of only 6% of youth being digital native. Interesting for us in developing Asia, is the fact that Malaysia ranks fourth globally, while most other countries rank below (Vietnam, 56 and Thailand, 85) and others well below (Pakistan, 115; Bhutan, 123; Philippines, 124; Indonesia, 132; India, 139; Sri Lanka, 143; Afghanistan, 149).
It is indeed possible to measure the performance of a school in terms of its efforts to provide a holistic education.
Deyata Kirula or “Crown of the Nation” is an annual showcase of the achievements of the Government of Sri Lanka. For the second consecutive year, the Ministry of Skills Development is presenting the skill standard for solid waste operations assistants. In 2012, Deyata Kirula was held in Anuradhapura in the North Central Province. Over 170 solid-waste workers representing the 26 local authorities in the province were awarded for solid-waste operations assistant National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level 2 certificates. In 2013, the exhibition will be held in Ampara in the Eastern Province.
Creation of new knowledge by universities is typically assessed in terms of publications and citations in scholarly venues, and the same measures are used to assess capacity for future contributions. As the production and dissemination of knowledge becomes increasingly mediated by the Internet, the Internet presence of researchers is becoming a more valid and relevant measure of knowledge capacity than the conventionally used publication and citation data. This article proposes a methodology that includes the use of the scholar.google.com search engine to supplement the conventional indices for knowledge capacity in a policy-relevant field of knowledge.