Impact of Tablet Based Training in Empowering Remote Rural Community of South West Bangladesh To Acquire

Disaster Preparedness Skills.

Syed Ali Tarek FRSA, FHEA, FRAS

Doctoral Candidate, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Email: S.A.Tarek@2012.ljmu.ac.uk

Agenda

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Introduction & Background of the Study

Findings and Discussion3

Details of the study

Country Risk Profile

• Bangladesh is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, exposed to a variety of natural disasters including cyclones, floods and earthquakes.

• The government released statistics, from 1980-2010, show that there were 234 natural disaster events affecting 323,480,264 people; 191,836 were killed and economic damage was 1.7 Billion USD (Elias, 2011).

• In 2012, Maplecroft’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) classified Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) as the most climate change affected ‘Extreme Risk’ cities among the top fifty.

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Country Risk Profile (Cont.)

– Flood 1st out of 162 countries– Tsunami 3rd out of 76 countries– Cyclone 6th out of 89 countries– Earthquake 17th out of 153 countries

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/aid/countries/factsheets/bangladesh_en.pdf

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ICT Based Projects in Bangladesh1• Gonokendra: The centre is meant for lifelong learning, social

empowerment, information networking and community development. Linkages are being established by Gonokendra to various other agencies to ensure access to other elements of better lives such as, health, sanitation, education, environment, credit and recreational services.

• Sustainable development networking programme (SDNP): SDNP has undertaken a project called “Multipurpose Village Information Centre” in the coastal belt (one is at Khulna, one at Cox’s Bazar and another at Barisal) of Bangladesh. The centres are proposed to serve the local community through providing weather report in time, health and telemedicine, marketing of locally produced goods, and food preservation practice.

• Community Information Centre (CIC) of Grameenphone: The Grameenphone Community Information Centre (CIC) is a shared premise where rural people may access a wide-range of services such as internet, voice communications, video conferencing and other information services. The main aims of CIC are bridging the “digital divide” by providing information access to rural people, alleviating poverty, educating the underserved and underprivileged on information-based services, etc.

Common User Related Issues

As found by Hasan and Islam (2009)•Poor literacy rate: The literacy rate is lowest in rural areas of Bangladesh. .•Language barrier: Primary language of Bangladeshis are Bengali/Bangla. There is very small content representation on the internet in their native language. This definitely hinders use of available relevant world information by the large number of people in Bangladesh as literate people of both urban and rural areas are mostly Bengali speaking.•Lack of ICT skill: The level of skills about computer use and internet navigation is still low in rural Bangladesh. Thus, rural people feel awkward to go to ICT based projects.•Unconscious about new technology: The majority of the rural population of Bangladesh is not conscious of new technology-based services and benefits of new ICTs regarding their needs.•Women clientele: Women are mostly housewives and victims of gender discrimination. Usually, they keep themselves within the household chores. As a result they are being deprived of getting much needed up-to-date information.

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Islam, M. S., & Hasan, M. N. (2009). Multipurpose community telecentres in Bangladesh: problems and prospects. The Electronic Library, 27(3), 537–553. doi:10.1108/02640470910966952

Why Disaster Preparedness Training for the Mass ?

• Bangladesh ranks as the 8th most populated country in the world, with the highest population density of the planet: 1,238 persons per square kilometre– growing at an estimated rate of 1.59% per year. This very high density worsens the impact of localized disasters.

• Continuing population growth and environmental degradation could further intensify the intensity of disasters in the future.

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Why Disaster Preparedness Training Using Tablet Device?

• Tablet is a variant of the smartphone, a multimedia device that can have internet connectivity giving users greater portability with the same functionalities of the bulky desktop PC or the weighty laptop.

• Moreover, touchscreen functionality eliminates the necessity of learning to use the keyboard and mouse which reduces the obvious preliminary awkwardness for someone who is not a technology literate person.

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Tablet Based Disaster Preparedness Training

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Project Factsheet2

• Location: South West Bangladesh.• Participants so far including the pilot test: 21• Research Methodology: Qualitative. • Current Stage: Completed 2nd iteration.• Content Language: Bangla• Programme Duration: Varied, max 4 days.• Content Audience: Male, Female minimum 18 year old with

any education background and with any technological literacy. • Type of Education: Non-formal and Informal, Social

Constructive learning.• Skills Learnt: Creating emergency plan, creating emergency

kit, basic first aid.

Screenshots of the Programme Interface 2

Screenshots of tasks within the Interface 2

Interactions with Device and Beyond2

• In the normal training days, participants formed groups and used the tablet interface to access the content.

• The content was designed in a linear way to facilitate a quicker adoption for the first time users.

• The interactions beyond the interface were nonlinear where participants would engage in relevant discussions which would branch out to others topics that are also closely relevant.

• This nonlinear style of group discussion brought the participant's experience into the context. As the participants at some point of their life have experienced devastating disaster events they were presumed to possess the needed experiential knowledge to combat such situations but it was found they were highly unstructured and often of less use because of delayed decision making during an event.

A Typical Training Day2

Findings and Discussion3

• The activity of creating an emergency plan required them to create a plan and inform all the family members about that and make sure the plan is accessible to all. To create the plan they jotted down all the family members contact details, information about the nearest safety shelter, a contact that is not local but can be contacted to inform about present location.

• Participants felt that awareness building is not meant for one but it’s a joint need.

• They reported that, other family members realized the importance of the plan once they discussed that among themselves.

Findings and Discussion3

• There were slides that presented basic first aids; participants agreed that they were not aware of the methodical way of doing it right.

• Some of the participants mentioned that if there was bleeding they would simply use any cloth (clean or dirty) to bandage the wound!

• Participants were shown different first aid activities with live demonstration which they later followed and demonstrated among the peers. Even given them a scenario that if there is no bandage what you would do, they suggested to use a Clean piece of cloth, not just any cloth.

Findings and Discussion3

• The tablet based educational experiment in the rural location though is a small scale study but is first of its kind for Bangladesh and for the developing countries. There is a lot to study about the rural engagement in education. This paper presented how use of the new technology can induce learning in a non-formal/informal setting.

• The informal learning seemed to have worked well within the group discussions both inside and outside of the training boundary.

• Further research is needed to understand how this non-formal/informal setting can be improvised particularly the informal setting.

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