My Dissertation
Case Study of Access to Higher
Education Through Technology in the Resource-Poor
Country of Haiti
Abstract
According to the Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development (2012-2013), access to
higher education is extremely limited in most of the
developing countries due to inadequate budgets, lack of
schools and teaching staff, costs of attending school,
and lack of higher learning institutions. The use of
educational technology could help bridge the gap, but
the current and past studies only explore the use of
available technologies to enhance learning where higher
education is already accessible. The purpose of this
case study was to investigate the use of one-to-many
videoconferencing as an education access tool for high
school seniors seeking higher education in the most
devastated areas of Haiti. The theoretical framework for
this study is based on the social learning theory of
Albert Bandura, activity theory, and constructivist
epistemology. This study attempts to answer the
following questions: How does one-to-many
videoconferencing learning enhance access to education
in Haiti? What are the experiences of various sets of
participants? The data were drawn from interviews with
the school officials, the students, and the instructors
and corroborated by hours spent observing the same
participants engaged in classroom activities via
videoconferencing. The data from this study suggest that
by preserving the features of the familiar classroom
model, videoconferencing could be successfully utilized
to compensate for the lack of other facilities for
higher education. The study will allow Haitian
professionals living outside of the country to affect
change in access to higher learning in Haiti.
Download the full study: Full study - pdf