In the last two decades, the higher education sector of Bangladesh has expanded considerably through the establishment of hundreds of public and private universities, along with thousands of colleges with higher education provisions. This expansion aims to make higher education accessible, to generate new knowledge and to cultivate skilled human resources for the country's economic development. At the same time, Bangladesh has observed notable progress in digital infrastructure and digitalising its services, including education. This chapter explores the digitalisation of higher education in Bangladesh, portraying its benefits, challenges, and potentials. It also highlights how government policies, regulations, and the ‘Digital Bangladesh' agenda have generated opportunities and challenges for higher educational institutions. Furthermore, it explores how the country is progressing towards fulfilling the political promise of providing 'smart education' opportunities for its citizens through the ‘Smart Bangladesh' agenda. This chapter also sheds some light on employability in relation to the government's new ‘National Skills Development Policy 2023', considering the emerging digital higher education in the era of global digital transformation and the increasing intervention of artificial intelligence (AI) in every sphere of life. Finally, this chapter concludes by explaining the key issues, challenges and recommendations for the digitalisation of higher education in the context of Bangladesh.
Top1. Introduction
The integration of emerging technologies in education and the imperative to address educational provision during emergencies, exemplified by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, have steered global education systems toward digital paradigms (Shohel et al., 2021a; 2021b; 2022a). Thus, the landscape of traditional teaching and learning methods has been profoundly reshaped by the rapid advancement of digital education. Digital education encompasses diverse elements such as online courses, virtual classrooms, interactive multimedia materials, learning management systems, and collaborative platforms using digital devices, connectivity, and internet as media (Alenezi, 2023; Benavides et al., 2020; Laufer et al., 2021; Lazar et al., 2020; Martin & Xie, 2022). This transformative period has not only disrupted conventional educational models but has also catalysed innovative digital approaches among educational providers. Consequently, learners of all ages are now enjoying the opportunities to access educational resources at their convenience and from any location due to the digitisation process of higher education in Bangladesh.
The advent of digital higher education in Bangladesh traces back to the early 1980s, marked by the introduction of instructional technologies like radio, television, overhead projectors, and computer-assisted learning tools (Akhter, 2012). With time, this landscape expanded to include a wider integration of multimedia projectors and a limited number of smart boards within classrooms. The transformative journey of digitalisation for higher education commenced in 2009. It was aligned with the government’s Digital Bangladesh agenda, which was spurred by the Access to Information (a2i) Programme and the Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP). HEQEP aimed to dismantle the isolation of Bangladeshi universities and embed them within the globally interconnected knowledge sphere. This initiative led to the establishment of the Bangladesh Research and Education Network (BdREN), a non-profit government trust designed to facilitate access to the global knowledge domain through connections to digital libraries (World Bank, 2009).
In recent years, the proliferation of handheld devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, along with improved internet accessibility, has remarkably expanded students' access to open educational resources (OER) and web-based educational services in Bangladesh. Additionally, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and BdREN have directed focused efforts in capacity building toward both public and private universities (Shohel et al., 2023a). It is evident that the availability of mobile phones and internet connectivity stands as a pivotal driver behind the progress toward digitalisation of services including education. Numerous private universities in the country have outpaced their public counterparts and colleges in terms of digitalising educational facilities.
During 2000 to 2020, Bangladesh witnessed mobile phone subscribers escalate from nearly negligible to over a hundred million (Taylor, 2023). By 2021, the country had registered approximately 184.44 million mobile phone subscriptions, underscoring the widespread adoption of emerging mobile technologies (see figure 1).
Figure 1. Number of mobile phone users in Bangladesh between 2000 and 2021 (Adopted from Statista 2023)
In addition, Figure 2 shows a substantial surge in the total number of internet users in Bangladesh from 2011 to 2021. By the close of 2010, approximately 3.70 million individuals in Bangladesh were connected to the internet, a number that escalated to 38.91 million by 2021, constituting a noteworthy 25% of the total population (World Bank, 2023).
Figure 2. Number of internet users in Bangladesh between 2000 and 2021 (Adapted from Statista 2023)