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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Sugata Mitra
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2017 The Author(s) This article describes a study under the Reaching the Unreached component of the Chiphen Rigpel project between the governments of Bhutan and India. This initiative is an attempt to provide computer literacy to children of Bhutan through setting up “hole in the wall” (HiWEL) Playground Learning Station(s) (PLSs). The study described here involves 14 sites (the experimental group), where PLSs are installed, and another 8 sites (the control group) without PLSs, but having similar demographic and socioeconomic profiling as the experimental group. This article compares the acquisition of computer literacy of school-going children in India with those in Bhutan. Results indicate that Bhutanese children have acquired computer literacy on their own and that their level of computer skills acquisition is similar to that of Indian children when the scores are normalized. This study was done over a one-year period, with results reported for eight months. In addition to verifying the earlier Indian results, this article hints at the fact that, irrespective of ethnicity, culture, and country, an identical—and possibly universal—self-organized learning mechanism seems to work with children vis-à-vis the Internet.
Author(s): Mitra S, Dangwal R
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Prospects
Year: 2017
Volume: 47
Issue: 3
Pages: 275-292
Print publication date: 01/09/2017
Online publication date: 05/10/2017
Acceptance date: 02/04/2016
Date deposited: 01/11/2017
ISSN (print): 0033-1538
ISSN (electronic): 1573-9090
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-017-9409-6
DOI: 10.1007/s11125-017-9409-6
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