Multi-casting in mountainous regions of developing countries: Analysis through ICT, institutions, and capabilities perspectives

Abstract

Overcoming shortages of teachers or teachers with required skills and experience is a major challenge in rural schools in the global south. We investigate a classroom video conference multi-casting project under development by the Nepal Wireless Networking Project. Our case study draws on one-to-one interviews and focus group discussions from three areas and 10 village research sites in Nepal. An analytical framework which combines the capability approach, institutions theory and ICTs is used. We found that multi-casting projects in the health domain (eHealth projects) focus on capacity building for rural health workers. Despite concerns about the quality of health outreach workers, they were central to eHealth project design. In contrast, teachers were not afforded such a central role in the classroom multi-casting project. Teachers were being sidelined or replaced, rather than being seen as an essential asset to the project. The main contribution of this paper is to enhance understanding of how multi-casting projects can enable or inhibit educational capabilities with regard to health and education in mountainous regions of developing countries. © 2014 IEEE.