Can APAN be more User Friendly?: A Longtime User’s Perspective

Paper presented at the "APAN Conference 2001", University Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia, 20 - 22 August 2001. Conference sponsored by Network Research Group, School of Computer Science, University Science Malaysia, University Science Malaysia, Asia Pacific Advanced Networking. http://www.my.apan.net/meeting/

Robert T. Raab and Buenafe R. Abdon

Abstract

Since its establishment in 1997, APAN's accomplishments have been significant. It has shown that broadband Internet connections are possible in the Asia Pacific region and it has established high speed Internet links to and from countries just entering the digital communications arena. It has sponsored international conferences and meetings bringing together professionals from a wide range of disciplines and allowed them to discuss how they, their countries and their institutions can more effectively exploit the tremendous potential of APAN's electronic network. It is definitely succeeding in its goal to "promote advanced research in networking technologies." It is maintained, however, that APAN has been much less successful in fostering the "development of high-performance broadband applications", and progress in this area has been limited. As the site states, "Application researchers have held workshops and symposiums, and the collaborations are being promoted in the region." There is still a pronounced lack of true applications making use of this valuable resource.

There are, however, some examples. The authors of this paper have been actively engaged in application research using APAN's infrastructure since 1998. In October of that year they organized and conducted several interactive teaching videoconference lectures over APAN connections between the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the Thai Department of Agriculture in Thailand. These interactive video lectures between the Philippines and Thailand continued through 1999 and an additional videoconferencing initiate was initiated allowing the participation of a NUS faculty member in the teaching of an international course at IRRI. Two online courses that the authors co developed are mirrored on APAN servers and can be accessed from the AGWG homepage.

There is tremendous scope for APAN to foster more activities of this nature, particularly in the area of e-learning. From the authors' perspective, this will require that APAN become more 'user friendly' and recognize and adapt to the developments that are driving the move to e-learning all over the world and particularly in the Asia Pacific region. The key factor that must be recognized is the increasing disaggregation of education and the emergence of partnership arrangements between traditional (non-profit) educational providers and a range of non-traditional intermediary organizations (some of which may be for-profit). It is only through such partnerships, where each partner contributes based on their respective comparative advantage, that these organizations can achieve their potential.

Reacting to, and actively participating in, the promotion of e-learning will require APAN to have the flexibility to deal with partnerships (as opposed to independent organizations), their unique circumstances and existing connectivity arrangements. Online courses that are being developed require connections between partners and to a range of commodity and non-commodity sites. Asia Pacific educational partnerships desperately need affordable hosting services with attendants in roughly the same time zone. Users need simplified procedures for accessing resources and applications on APAN servers.

Although e-Learning and non-traditional partnerships are not yet well advanced in the Asia Pacific region there are a few pioneers and interest is strong and growing among the major stakeholder groups - traditional academic institutions, traditional students, emerging intermediaries, professionals with a need for continuing education and private sector corporations with the need to provide educational opportunities for their workforce.

The Asia Pacific Regional Technology Centre is an example of an emerging intermediary organization. Its primary focus is on providing continuing educational opportunities for agricultural professionals throughout the Asia Pacific. It relies almost exclusively on e-learning for educational delivery and carries out its work through multisectoral partnerships. Initial experience indicates that the approach works in the region, is cost effective and that all partners, and the clients, can and do benefit from the collaboration.