REGIONAL RESEARCH - TRAINING COMPONENT

End-User Training

During the first phase of PAN Localization project all partner countries have developed local language computing software. The natural step forward is to train end-users to use this software to eventually draw the intended socio-economic benefits of the work. Thus, all partner countries are aiming to institute training programs in a variety of ways for different user groups within their countries. These end-users will be trained on a variety of applications. Thus, the project will help draw in a lot of data across languages, communities, applications and methodologies to help synthesize a comprehensive perspective on ICT diffusion into user communities.

The following research questions will be addressed:

1. What are the issues related to development of training material of localized applications in local languages? Can material from English or other languages be re-used? What are the copyright implications?
2. How much more effective is training material in local languages compared to similar material in foreign languages? How large is language a barrier to use and to learn the use of technology?
3. How do different training methods and tools compare, when training a variety of user-groups, including gender? Is there need to specialize training mechanisms and tools for these user-groups?
4. How hard is it to train different user-groups to use localized technology to access content? How much harder is it to train the same user-groups to create and publish content? What are different barriers to learning to use localized ICTs to communicate, and to access and publish local language content: age, gender, level of education, etc.?
5. What are the existing ICT training and diffusion policies and do they explicitly address the local language requirements? How can policy around training be strengthened in the region for effective diffusion of localized ICTs?

A variety of methods will be employed to train on a variety of user-groups for a variety of content access and generation applications and platforms. Though national level research will consolidate national experiences, the regional research component will be able to synthesize these results across the region. The regional research component will work with national initiatives in development of appropriate social tools to monitor and evaluate the training programs. This regional component will collectively and comparatively analyze the results of these social tools to research the role of local language computing in ICT Diffusion in developing Asian populations. The regional research component will also coordinate among different country components to ensure that same training across different components is not duplicated and training developed at one component may be reused by other partners.

Objectives:

1. Examine effective means to develop digital literacy through the use of local language computing and content
2. Investigate challenges and solutions to promote Use of multilingual ICTs: Research into development and conduct of training to promote use
   • Develop and trial reuse of training materials in local languages for different end-user groups in different countries
   • Conduct end-user training to determine effective strategies to retrieve content
   • Conduct end-user training to determine effective strategies to generate culturally-relevant
3. Research into effective solutions to mature multilingual Access to ICTs

---

CategoryTraining