Error 403: Syrians Blocked From Online Learning Platforms

from the don't-punish-victims-of-regimes dept

Individuals in dictatorships need more freedom not less. Syrians have for years been unable to work remotely or pay for remote services, even educational ones. Do we want to do the same now to Afghans, who are already in fear of the Taliban? Examining in detail the experiences of Syrians, can maybe lead us to a better solution.

Major online distance learning platforms based in the US, such as Coursera, that have emerged as crucial tools during the pandemic, are partially or fully blocked in Syria because of U.S. sanctions. While intended to weaken the Syrian government, the sanctions have also restricted access to an online learning universe that could offer critical opportunities to ordinary Syrians trapped in difficult circumstances.

With a global audience of 87 million learners, Coursera offers free lecture courses from universities around the world, including many top-tier American schools such as University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Stanford, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern.

But in the war-torn country, people are unable to take advantage of the online high quality courses.

Coursera is not alone: Its competitor, Udacity, is also banned in Syria. Of the major online learning platforms, the only one operating in Syria is edX, the nonprofit platform founded by MIT. However edX only offers a few courses. This is particularly problematic for a country that has often relied on these courses to innovate and create new job opportunities.

But why is Syria sanctioned?

Syria has been the target of economic sanctions imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) since 1979, when the Carter administration added Syria to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The program includes trade embargoes, import and export restrictions, investment bans, asset freezes, and travel bans.

President Bush further expanded the U.S. Syria sanctions program in 2004 as part of the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ under the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (SAA).

In 2011, President Obama imposed new sanctions against Syria in response to the Assad regime’s targeting of civilians in pro-democracy uprisings. The 2011 sanctions targeted the Syrian oil sector, freezing the assets of Syrian individuals and entities, prohibiting petroleum imports and investments, and prohibiting the sale of services to Syria.

What does this mean for Syrians?

The restrictions seem more symbolic than effective. IP address bans are notoriously easy to work around — to access the blocked websites, Syrians often resort to VPNs that mask their location. The problem is that VPNs are often unreliable and may interfere with the interactive experience offered by the platforms.

Even if Syrians manage to access free online learning classes via a VPN, they are unable to obtain certificates of completion, since those require a fee as and no online payment methods are available from within the country due to these same sanctions.

The same scenario applies to language tests. Syrians are unable to take TOEFL and IELTS, the two main English language proficiency tests accepted across the world, as payments made from within Syria are not accepted.

The easiest option is to take these tests in neighboring countries, such as Lebanon, but the costs of travelling are too high for the large majority of Syrians (80% live in poverty, according to UN data released in March 2021).

An alternative to IELTS and TOEFL is the Duolingo English Test, which became available in late 2020 after Duolingo managed to receive a special exemption from OFAC. While the exam can be taken online while in Syria, the fee must be paid from outside Syria. As such, people have to ask friends and relatives living in other countries to make the payment for them, a significant obstacle due to the difficulty of conducting wire transfers in the country.

Computer science students and software engineers are also unable to access some essential services offered by Microsoft's GitHub, the world's most-used tool for software development.

On top of all that, at a moment when much of the rest of the world is relying on digital tools to survive a pandemic, Syrians are also unable to access other online services, such as Amazon Books and Zoom, that have been crucial for online learning elsewhere.

We Need Better Legal Frameworks

People under military rule are essentially "Stateless" and should be provided opportunities to integrate into the global economy rather than kept out. The rationale for comprehensive sanctions seems to be that any money flowing into a country with a military dictator will end up in the dictator's hands. However, this is not always the case - and allowing people a way to make a living and to educate themselves, independent of the ruling class, is likely to be in everyone's interests in the long run.

Raise the Voices is an International human rights project that supports victims and their families.

Filed Under: ofac, online education, oppression, sanctions, syria
Companies: coursera

Universities Ask Court To Block ICE's Directive Ordering The Removal Of Foreign Students Engaged In Remote Learning

from the don't-be-a-dick,-ICE dept

MIT and Harvard are suing to have ICE's latest attack on (legal) foreign visitors to this country blocked. A few days ago, ICE retracted an exception it had previously issued in response to the COVID pandemic. This exemption was issued back in March to allow students here on visas to continue their studies, even if all of their classes were now online.

It's now July and the COVID crisis isn't over. In fact, it appears to be getting worse. The US is expressing its exceptionalism by dominating the world in the number of new cases daily. Schools are prepping for the fall semester and the reality of the situation is that moving back to normal classes, rather than sticking with remote learning, just isn't possible at this point in time.

That reality makes no difference to ICE. It has decided the crisis is over and any students here legally should exit the country if they can't take classes in person. MIT and Harvard have no intention of moving back to physical classes when school commences in a couple of months. And the schools don't feel their foreign students should be punished for not attending classes that aren't being held or putting their health at risk unnecessarily just because the administration has unilaterally declared it safe to return to school.

Here's how the schools describe the current situation in their lawsuit [PDF]:

Medical evidence and official governmental guidance indicate that indoor gatherings of any size are of particular concern. Densely populated classrooms that are attendant with on-campus instruction have the potential to turn into “super-spreader” situations that endanger the health of not only the university community, but also those in the surrounding areas and anyone else with whom community members may come into contact. Indeed, in recognition of the exceptional risk of indoor congregation, Harvard has limited undergraduate on-campus residency to 40% of capacity for the upcoming term. Similarly, MIT has limited undergraduate on-campus residency for the fall to members of the rising senior class and a limited number of additional students.

Even if it were possible to simply ignore the ramifications of bringing students back on campus to partake in "super-spreader" classes, ICE is demanding schools jump through a series of logistical hoops to ensure students here on visas can continue to be enrolled and stay in the country. The first demand is that physical classes must compose a certain percentage of the total curriculum. Then it gets even more difficult. Schools will be required to do the following for each and every foreign student enrolled.

[ICE] announced that universities that have adopted a hybrid model—a mixture of online and in-person classes—will have to certify for each student on an F1 visa that the “program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load for the fall 2020 semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program.” To do so, universities on a hybrid model will be required to issue a new Form I-20 for each of these students—in some cases, numbering in the thousands per university—by August 4, 2020.

Even if ICE doesn't care about foreigners, you'd think it might have some consideration for the Americans running these schools. But it appears it doesn't. The clawback of the exemption means schools must start putting more people on campus -- including staff and administration -- even if it means increasing the risk of virus transmission. The lawsuit points out the original exemption was supposed to be in place "for the duration of the [COVID] emergency." Without prior notice or request for comment, ICE has decided the emergency is over… at least for foreign students.

This unjustified move will do an amazing amount of damage to foreign students.

The July 6 Directive will harm continuing F-1 students immensely. For many students affected by the July 6 Directive, it is infeasible or impossible to attempt to transfer to a program that offers in-person curriculum and therefore allows them to pursue their education from within the United States on F-1 visa status. These students will therefore likely be forced to leave the country. The consequences of this sudden displacement are both financial and personal. In addition to incurring substantial expenses to make international travel arrangements in the midst of a pandemic that has significantly reduced the availability of air travel, as well as losing their homes—in many instances at great cost associated with broken leases—some students will be forced to upend their young children’s lives by returning to their home countries, while others’ families will be split apart in order to comply with the July 6 Directive.

[...]

For F-1 students enrolled in a fully online program, under the July 6 Directive those students cannot lawfully remain in the United States to continue their studies. Unless this Court intervenes, these students will be required to make precipitous arrangements to return to their home countries amid a worldwide pandemic that has caused nations to close their borders and has considerably limited international travel options. They must abandon housing arrangements they have made, breach leases, pay exorbitant air fares, and risk COVID-19 infection on transoceanic flights. And if their departure is not timely, they risk detention by immigration authorities and formal removal from the country that may bar their return to the United States for ten years.

The schools are asking the court to strike down the directive. They point out the guidance violates US administrative law, which prohibits "arbitrary, capricious" agency actions. Directives that fail to consider "important aspects of the problem" are the very definition of these terms. The suit also notes that directives like these are supposed to be preceded with a "notice and comment" period, which obviously did not happen here. The plaintiffs are asking the court to permanently block the new policy and declare it unlawful. Hopefully, the court will see ICE's move for what it is: an abuse of its power to inflict misery on foreigners -- even those who are here legally.

Filed Under: covid-19, education, ice, immigration, online education, students, visas
Companies: harvard, mit

Rather Than Reinventing Education By Teaching A Million People At Once, Can We Perfect Teaching One Person At A Time?

from the educational-challenges dept

We've written a few times about innovation in education, and I've pointed out that I think the real breakthrough opportunity is in figuring out ways to get "students" to teach the subject matter themselves. As I noted, it was only once I had to teach certain subjects that I fully understood them -- because my students kept probing and asking more questions, which forced me to go beyond "just getting by" with my knowledge of the subject, and to dig deeper and gain better understanding. And it feels like there's an opportunity to use technology to make that possible -- and to somehow flip the equation, so that education is less about being "lectured" and more about students learning by teaching themselves and each other.

So, I found it fascinating to listen to a recent episode of economist Russ Robert's EconTalk podcast, in which he spoke with economist Arnold Kling about the future of education, based on Kling's recent article reviewing what educational technologies he thought were overhyped, and which really had a chance to change education for the better. In the discussion, they raise this same concept of learning by teaching, but the key takeaway was slightly different: it's that so much of the focus on technology in education today is figuring out how to take a lecture or a lesson and distributing it much more widely to many more students.

You can understand, in theory, why that seems desirable. After all, if you can find the absolute best teacher of a subject, wouldn't it be great to allow anyone and everyone to sit in on his or her lectures? But, of course, the problem with this scenario is that it assumes that it's from the lecture that we learn -- and there's little evidence to support that across the board (that's not to say that people don't learn from lectures, but it may not be the key aspect of learning). Instead, Kling suggests, the true breakthroughs come from more personalized situations in which a teacher and a student work together though a problem.

And, of course, Kling's optimism is in the idea that such customized and personal teaching may be more possible with technology today -- allowing for more adaptive learning. But, for the most part, all the big stories we hear about technology in education seem to be about just reaching more people, and he worries that this is the wrong approach. From the article:

To put this another way, I believe that the future of teaching is not one-to-many. Instead, it is many-to-one. By many-to-one, I mean that one student receives personalized instruction that comes from many educators. To make that work, technology must act as an intermediary, taking the information from the educators and customizing it to fit the student's knowledge, ability, and even his or her emotional state.

I do think that this doesn't exclude those broad distribution efforts, however. In fact, he more or less admits this in the podcast, in talking about the Khan Academy which we've written about before. While initially he suggests that he's not that impressed with that kind of thing because it falls into that "one to many" approach, he later admits that when you use it as a teaching aid to flip the equation so that lectures are done at home at your own pace, and classroom time is used instead for problem solving and greater one-to-one interactions between teachers and students, the results are much better.

No matter what your opinion on this is, if you're interested in the future of education, I highly recommend giving a listen to the podcast discussion between Roberts and Kling.

Filed Under: online education

Teachers Union Thinks It Blocked Online Classes...But It Didn't

from the acted-like-assclowns-to-boot dept

I've always struggled with the concept of unions and collective bargaining. The realist in me knows the history of employment in the early days of this country and how woefully employers treated their people. Early labor unions also had a heavy hand in social reforms for ideals like free public education. Yay, unions! On the other hand, we're all aware of the stories of waste and corruption among big union leadership, the inefficiencies they create in the workforce, and the potentially detrimental effects on the economic competitiveness of America in a global marketplace. Damn you, evil unions!

And so it's under this same conflicted backdrop that I read what SD sent in, a story about the University of California's teachers' union gleefully celebrating the blocking of online courses. More specifically, the union is saying the language in the contract would allow them to block any online course that would result in lessening employment statistics for the school's lecturers, which make up a hefty percentage of the teaching force. Let's tackle a couple of things relating to this story.

First, examine some words from Bob Samuels, President of the union and possible jerky-quote-producing-android-automaton:

 “We feel that we could stop almost any online program through this contract. We feel we got something that the university didn’t really understand."

The article goes on to note:

"And stop it they would. Regardless of any data administrators trot out to argue that students learn just as well online as they do in the classroom, the union would do whatever it could to block the university from moving courses online if it decides the move would make life worse for lecturers, says Samuels."

Now, perhaps you're like me and any time you hear someone say something that so clearly dismisses anyone else's well-being aside from their own, your brain shuts down your ears for fear that your entire faith in the basic providence of humanity would be vanquished in an angry mind-fire. So let me break this down for you. Samuels, President of a union of teachers, is saying that they'll block online courses regardless of any evidence as to their efficacy if it results in even one less lecturer on campus. Learning? Rising costs in education for students? Technological progress? Unimportant, fools! This is where I think back to the union leaders of old, who pushed for social reforms effecting those outside their union members, and wonder where it all went wrong.

(Fun side note: Samuels recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post suggesting that we forgo Obama and the Tea Party in favor on an online activist party. WHAT!!??? And put all those businesses that spring up around both the Obama campaign and Tea Party rallies out of work!!?? You know who disagrees with Bob Samuels? Bob Samuels!)

And here's the really fun part. The University reviewed the langauge Samuels is referring to and promptly chuckled something close to, "what the duck is he talking about?"

“They do not have the power to block the university from implementing new online programs,” says Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for the Office of the President. The most the [union’s] bargaining unit could do,” Klein says, “is provide written notice saying, ‘We don’t like this.’ ”

I think what's most amazing to me in all of this is that apparently there aren't any Public Relations teachers willing to give Samuels a hand. If you want to gain public support for limiting online classes, it's possible. You come out with some kind of study or research suggesting the benefit of lecturers to the actual education process, you make your argument to the school and the public, and we find out who wins. What you don't do is misinterpret legal language in a contract as saying you have power you don't and then gleefully provide quotes in articles that essentially amount to, "We got one over on a higher education institution and now they can kiss our collectively bargaining asses."

Filed Under: california, online education, teachers, unions