This paper describes how distance educations in developing countries can enhance interactivityby means of information and communication technologies. It is argued that e-learning involvesa shift in the educational structure from traditional transmission of knowledge to interactivecreation of knowledge. Our case studies are two distance educations in Bangladesh and SriLanka that use different technologies for implementing interactivity; Internet and computersin one case and video and mobile phones in the other. The findings are analyzed based onStructuration Theory and we compare the two approaches based on emerging norms andbeliefs. Findings from both cases show the concurrent enactment of both the transmissionand the interactive structure. Whereas peer collaboration and the use of self-assessment toolsmake students take more ownership of their learning, we also found the idea of a classroomwith an instructive teacher to be deeply rooted in the students’ minds.
This article analyzes the construction of women in national ICT policies in South and Southeast Asia. The aim is to unravel the role ascribed to women in these policies and how this affects suggested measures. The research is based on critical discourse analysis and shows that women are mainly constructed as victims, mothers, or an untapped resource. We argue that if women are speciªcally targeted in policies, careful attention should be given to how they are portrayed. Our analysis also shows that in most cases the suggested solutions on how to include women in the ICT society only deal with the symptoms of gender inequality rather than the structures that prevent equal opportunities. We conclude by discussing implications for research and practice.
There is a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in education. Drawing on interviews and surveys with students and teachers in three Swedish schools, this study finds that studentsas well as teachers find much of the students' social media use distractive to learning. We investigate this by means of an interpretative study of students' and teachers' experiences. We find that concerns relate to how social media use makes students less social, how weaker students are more likely to get distracted, how teachers lack strategies for tackling the problem and how the responsibility of the use is delegated to the students. We discuss how the distractive use of social media is made possible as a result of education policies requiring a higher degree of individual work, individual responsibility, and educational choices forstudents. Teachers and school leaders need to jointly reclaim the students and coping strategies for the distractive use are urgently needed.
In this paper we explore how laptops used in 1:1 classrooms affect cooperation and collaboration practices. Based on an observational time study we find that the most common activity in 1:1 classrooms is group work using the computer. We also found that despite what the concept 1:1 alludes about one student working with one computer, most laptop use takes on other forms such as two students working with one computer (1:2) or two students working together using two laptops (2:2). The findings reported in this paper about the various different collaboration arrangements have implications for both research and practice. Practice because teachers can arrange activities based on an awareness of the different student-laptop constellations that emerge when students are given a laptop. Research is likewise informed about the various group work constellations and can build on this knowledge for further analysis of the pros and cons with the different collaborative forms.
This study reports an interpretative case study investigating practices and challenges in an emerging m-learning environment at Makerere University in Uganda. The research was part of the MobiClass pilot project. Data was collected by means of observations and interviews with teachers and various m-learning support staff, including teacher trainers, systems administrators and a software developer. The Framework for Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) is used as an analytic framework. The research focuses on how learning content management systems (LCMS) are implemented and used for m-learning purposes. We observed teacher training and m-learning content development practices and found that teacher skills for developing educational content, institutional m-learning policies and training programs are crucial success factors. The main finding is the importance of the support staff; it takes a long time to implement new technology and change teaching practices, support staff is needed to manage, inspire and support student and teachers.
This article discusses practices, opportunities, and challenges in local e-government project management by means of a case study involving interviews, document studies, and an element of action research, over eight months. The analysis against e-government success factors finds seven "critical issues"; political timing, resource allocation, political mandate, distinction between administrative and political responsibilities, coordination of departments, dependence on providers, and use of standards. We found these issues open for local choice, influences of strong individuals and groups, and chance. This is a consequence of the prevailing strategic model for the public sector, New Public Management, which leaves these issues to be filled by negotiations among many actors with different roles, goals, and action space. The general lesson is that there is a need for practical ways of acting strategically to reduce the risk level and increase the ability to implement policy.
Socratic questioning stresses the importance of questioning for learning. Flipped Classroom pedagogy generates a need for effective questions and tasks in order to promote active learning. This paper describes a project aimed at finding out how different kinds of questions and tasks support students’ learning in a flipped classroom context. In this study, during the flipped courses, both the questions and tasks were distributed together with video recordings. Answers and solutions were presented and discussed in seminars, with approximately 10 participating students in each seminar. Information Systems students from three flipped classroom courses at three different levels were interviewed in focus groups about their perceptions of how different kinds of questions and tasks supported their learning process. The selected courses were organized differently, with various kinds of questions and tasks. Course one included open questions that were answered and presented at the seminar. Students also solved a task and presented the solution to the group. Course two included open questions and a task. Answers and solutions were discussed at the seminars where students also reviewed each other’s answers and solutions. Course three included online single- and multiple choice questions with real-time feedback. Answers were discussed at the seminar, with the focus on any misconceptions. In this paper we categorized the questions in accordance with Wilson (2016) as factual, convergent, divergent, evaluative, or a combination of these. In all, we found that any comprehensible question that initiates a dialogue, preferably with a set of Socratic questions, is perceived as promoting learning. This is why seminars that allow such questions and discussion are effective. We found no differences between the different kinds of Socratic questions. They were seen to promote learning so long as they made students reflect and problematize the questions. To conclude, we found that questions and tasks promote learning when they are answered and solved in a process that is characterized by comprehensibility, variation, repetition and activity.
Background: While setting international standards for midwifery education has attracted considerable global attention, the education and training of midwifery educators has been relatively neglected, particularly in low-resource settings where capacity building is crucial. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the expectations of midwifery educators in Bangladesh who took part in a blended web-based master's programme in SRHR and the extent to which these were realized after 12 months of part-time study. Methods: Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to collect data. A structured baseline questionnaire was distributed to all participants at the start of the first course (n = 30) and a second endpoint questionnaire was distributed after they (n = 29) had completed the core courses one year later. At the start of the first course, five focus group discussions (FGD) were held with the midwifery educators. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were used for the analyses. Results: Midwifery educators who took part in the study identified expectations that can be grouped into three distinct areas. They hoped to become more familiar with technology, anticipated they would learn pedagogical and other skills that would enable them to better support their students' learning and thought they might acquire skills to empower their students as human beings. Participants reported they realized these ambitions, attributing the master's programme with helping them take responsibility for their own teaching and learning, showing them how to enhance their students' learning and how to foster reflective and critical thinking among them. Conclusions: Midwifery educators have taken part in a creative learning environment which has developed their engagement in teaching and learning. They have done this using a blended learning model which combines online learning with face-to-face contact. This model can be scaled up in low resource and remote settings.
To record the variation of perceptions of midwifery faculty in terms of the possibilities and challenges related to the completion of their first online master's level programme in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Somaliland. The informants included in this phenomenongraphical focus group study were those well-educated professional women and men who completed the master's program. The informant perceived that this first online master's level programme provided tools for independent use of the Internet and independent searching for evidence-based information, enhanced professional development, was challenge-driven and evoked curiosity, challenged professional development, enhanced personal development and challenged context-bound career paths. Online education makes it possible for well-educated professional women to continue higher education. It furthermore increased the informants' confidence in their use of Internet, software and databases and in the use of evidence in both their teaching and their clinical practice. Programmes such as the one described in this paper could counter the difficulties ensuring best practice by having a critical mass of midwives who will be able to continually gather contemporary midwifery evidence and use it to ensure best practice. An increase of online education is suggested in South-central Somalia and in similar settings globally.
This paper compares and analyzes three cases where mobile technology is developed and used for everyday learning in developing countries. Preliminary results from field studies and tests are presented and analyzed in terms of the technical, professional, social, cultural and organizational challenges involved in development. In Bangladesh Virtual Classroom SMS is used together with TV to make education interactive. The eduPhone project develops a system and a method for delivering everyday “situated education”, such as emergency medical advice, to people lacking access to such services. The Agricultural Market Information System project disseminates information to improve local agricultural markets and, in particular, supporting small farmers, by mobile phones. The paper reports the cases and findings from investigations and tests, including field studies, laboratory and field tests, and experiences from implementation. We find that technical challenges are not great and in most cases concern innovativeness of application rather than access, use and usability; e-readiness among people is higher than often reported. The main problems lie in organizational challenges – developing a sustainable business model and reorganizing processes consequently – and social and cultural challenges such as local power structures and professional traditions.
This paper investigates potential changes in requirements for "administrative literacy" - knowledge and skills required from citizens - when manual services are replaced by electronic ones. Do requirements increase, decrease or change qualitatively? We compare manual and electronic versions of ten commonly used services. The needs for knowledge and skills, content and procedures were considerably less for the e-services in eight out of ten cases; however, in complicated services there may rather be a change of skills, e.g. replacing verbal skills with skill in searching for information online. E-services relieve the user of some requirements; hence one obstacle for inclusion is reduced. However, we also found problems with the e-services implying that design of e-services should be informed by the kind of measure we have used as it is of great importance for inclusion in the e-society. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.
Open content has the potential to change the playing field when it comes to every individual’s right to education. Development of new course content is both expensive and time consuming and open content can help educational organizations to deal with these problems by offering free-to-use educational resources. Despite the benefits of open content the usage is very low in developing countries and understanding why content developers choose not to use open content is the first step towards finding a solution to the problem. Which inhibiting factors for reuse do content developers in developing countries experience with open content? To answer the question interviews, questionnaires and observations have been made with content developers from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and from UNESCO Open Training Platform. Findings show that many of the inhibiting factors with reuse of open content do not necessarily relate to the actual content. Educational rules and regulations, lack of infrastructure, teaching practices and traditions etc. are major obstacles that need to be overcome if the usage of open content should increase.
Purpose - We evaluate effects of students’ 1:1 laptop use from a capability perspective by investigating increases and decreases of students’ opportunities and choices. We investigate changes that have taken place and how these changes enable or restrict students to do and be what they desire.
Design/methodology/approach – We undertake an interpretive case study based on group interviews and questionnaires. Sen’s capability approach is used as theoretical framework and has informed the data collection and the analysis.
Findings – 1:1 laptops in schools have provided students with new opportunities and choices, but also restricted others. An evident opportunity is the equalization of access to computers. Other opportunities relate to schoolwork efficiency and increased access to information. Gains also include the use of different media for overcoming disabilities or to fit individual learning styles. Regarding students’ well-being, a “fun” learning environment is mentioned. However, the “fun” is often about playing games or using social media – something which diverts the students’ attention from the learning. Students also find that they are less social, too computer dependent, and that they miss using pen and paper. Additionally, health issues such as back problems and headaches are reported, as well as an increased risk of being robbed.
Originality/value – Most research on 1:1 laptops in education focuses on easily quantifiable measures and reports from a teacher perspective. We take a broader approach and investigate the impact 1:1 laptops have on students’ well-being and agency.
In the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) ICT use in education is well studied. Education is often seen as a pre-‐requisite for development and ICTs are believed to aid in education, e.g. to make it more accessible and to increase its quality. In this paper we study the access and use of ICT in a study circle (SC) education program in the south coast of Kenya. The study is qualitative reporting results based on interviews and observations with SC participants, government officers and SC coordinators and teachers. The study builds on the capability approach perspective of development where individuals’ opportunities and ability to live a life that they value are focused. The aim of the study is to investigate the capability outcomes enabled through the capability inputs access and use of ICT in education as well as the factors that enabled and/or restricted the outcomes. Findings show that many opportunities have been enabled such as an increase in the ability to generate an income, learning benefits, community development and basic human development (e.g. literacy and self-‐confidence). However, conversion factors such as a poorly developed infrastructure and poor IT literacy prevent many of the individuals from taking full advantage of the ICT and the opportunities it enables.
In the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) ICT use in education is well studied. Education is often seen as a pre-requisite for development and ICTs are believed to aid in education, e.g. to make it more accessible and to increase its quality. In this paper we study the access and use of ICT in a study circle (SC) education program in the south coast of Kenya. The study is qualitative reporting results based on interviews and observations with SC participants, government officers and SC coordinators and teachers. The study builds on the capability approach perspective of development where individuals’ opportunities and ability to live a life that they value are focused. The aim of the study is to investigate the capability outcomes enabled through the capability inputs access and use of ICT in education as well as the factors that enabled and/or restricted the outcomes. Findings show that many opportunities have been enabled such as an increase in the ability to generate an income, learning benefits, community development and basic human development (e.g. literacy and self-confidence). However, conversion factors such as a poorly developed infrastructure and poor IT literacy prevent many of the individuals from taking full advantage of the ICT and the opportunities it enables.
The introduction of e-Learning opens new possibilities and new ways of delivering courses. Learning objects can be used and reused in educational contexts to educate students, employees, administrative officers and citizens. In later years Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) developed by Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) has more or less become a de-facto standard for creating learning materials that can be used in different learning management systems (LMS).There are many scientific papers that deal with the benefits of e-Learning from a learner’s perspective, or from a strictly economical point of view. In this paper we critically evaluate which benefits and drawbacks a course designer in a university setting can have from using the SCORM standard to deliver a course to the students. We use scenarios to test what benefits and drawbacks can be observed by setting up a course on an LMS with and without the use of the SCORM specification.Our findings show that for a course designer, advantages with SCORM are possibility of reuse, use of metadata and possibility to sequence the learning path of the learner. The most important drawback for a course designer is the lack of flexibility when using SCORM. Another major drawback is structure rigidity. In order to fully be able to use the potential of SCORM the course design and content should not be changed after the course is started. This might have negative impact on the possibilities to design a university course if the field of study is volatile, like many ICT-related topics are.
Free-to-use learning material, open content (OC), is ascribed the potential to change the playingfield in regards to every individual’s right to education. OC is, however, not much used indeveloping countries. The aim of this paper is to study how actors involved in contentdevelopment affect reuse of OC. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) concepts are used to describecontent development processes in two cases (in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka). Findings show thatthere are content properties that need to be flexible and adaptable for it to be used. The propertiesmust not only fit with students and content developers, it must also be adaptable to fit with theeducational organization and the technologies used for dissemination. Since there are manyactors and properties that must be aligned it is unlikely that fully context independent OC can bedeveloped. For OC to play a role for development the focus has to be on developing flexiblecontent that easily can be adapted to different contexts.
In this paper we present a framework to be used for evaluation of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) projects. The framework is based on Sen´s notion of development as freedom where human capabilities and functionings are seen as key aspects to development. Sen´s capability approach presents an alternative way of seeing and evaluating development (alternative to more traditional ways of measuring development). The approach is based on expanding freedoms, or eliminating unfreedoms, for people so that they can live a life that they have reason to value. Even though Sen is referenced a lot in ICT4D literature the analysis rarely goes further then stating that Sen presents an alternative to traditional ways of development. Reasons can be that the capability approach does not specifically mention technology, in addition to the lack of guidelines presented by Sen on how to use the framework. The aim of this paper is to operationalize the evaluation process and to include a clear role for technology in Sen´s capability framework. The framework is validated with a case on distance education from Bangladesh.
Understanding the role of ICT in development is at the core of the ICT4D field. However, while most agree that ICT do contribute to development, the question of how is still not fully explored. In this research-in-progress, we propose a framework that combines two theoretical lenses, the choice framework (that is based on the capability approach) and affordances, to increase our understanding of ICTs role in the development process. The capability approach considers development as freedoms for people to live the lives they have a reason to value. The affordance theory describes action possibilities allowed by material properties, thereby allowing the examination of how individuals explore material properties of information systems with the objective of enhancing their capabilities. We argue that, by combining the choice framework with affordances we can better explain the role of ICT in the development process, and explain how individuals’ agency and social structures influence their ability to perceive affordances in their interaction with the ICT.
Internet resources have been ascribed transformative powers in the development of educational organizations and students in developing regions. However, most development projects relating to Internet resources focus on publishing material without much analysis of the actual use. The question then is how we can go deeper in our analysis and study actual development outcomes. The analysis in this paper is based on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach where both the means and ends are evaluated. The research question is “What are the benefits of using Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach when evaluating development outcomes?”. We answer the question by evaluating what capabilities and functionings Internet resources can enable for students in higher education. Findings show that the Capability Approach enables us to gain a deeper understanding of why and how development outcomes are achieved. We are also able to follow the development process from the intervention to the realized outcomes.
This paper describes the development of an open source Learning Object Repository (LOR), named eNOSHA (eLearning Neutral Object Storage with a Holistic Approach.), at University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka. The e-Learning Centre (eLC) at UCSC has been developing learning content for a nationwide e-Learning Bachelor of Information Technology degree (eBIT) and a preparatory programme for the eBIT program (The Foundation in Information Technology, FIT). Since eBIT started in 2002, a lot of learning content has been developed in-house and there was a need for a repository to support storing and reusing of learning content. The aim of the paper is to present the development of eNOSHA in regards to three key concepts, flexibility, reusability and user-friendliness. Based on a requirement analysis carried out in December 2008, a plan was drafted for the development and implementation of the system. A participatory approach was used where users have been involved in the design, evaluation and implementation. Based on the testing of the system we gained a positive response regarding the searchability and reuse of content. Tests have, however, shown that additional features are needed to be implemented to improve the usability of the system, Even though the system has been developed based on the needs of UCSC, one of the objectives has always been to make it context independent. Internal tests conclude that the system is flexible enough to work in different contexts but the design may need some minor changes once tested in other organizations or cultures.
The aim of this study is to explore midwifery educators’ expected outcomes in the net-based master's programme, the programmes’ realised outcomes and the reported difference regarding the increased choices for the graduates and the effect on their agency.
Design
In this case study, we focused on a net-based master's programme in sexual and reproductive health in Somalia. Somalia suffers from a shortage of skilled birth attendants and there is a need for building up the capacity of midwifery educators.
Setting and participants
Data was collected in focus group discussions at the start of the programme and eight months after the students graduated. The data were analysed through the lens of the choice framework, which is based on the capability approach.
Findings
Findings show that many of the graduates’ expectations were met, while some were more difficult to fulfil. While the midwives’ choices and resource portfolios had improved because of their role as educators, the social structure prevented them from acting on their agency, specifically in regards to making changes at the social level. Several of the positive developments can be attributed to the pedagogy and structure of the programme.
Conclusion
The flexibility of net-based education gave the midwifery educators a new educational opportunity that they previously did not have. Students gained increased power and influence on some levels. However, they still lack power in government organisations where, in addition to their role as educators, they could use their skills and knowledge to change policies at the social level.
Research in ICT4D is a constant search to answer the question of how ICT fosters development in underdeveloped communities. While many theories have guided research, we are yet to develop a cumulative body of knowledge to answer this question. In this paper, we argue that the elusive link between ICT and development needs to be grounded in three groups of theories: theories to understand development; theories to understand ICT; and theories to understand how ICT make development happen. We present exemplars of theories from each group, and illustrate how we have used them in our research. Through reflecting on which questions to be answered by including the three groups of theories, we propose research agendas.
Despite agreement amongst donors, business and political leaders concerning the negative effects of corruption, levels have not fallen in East Africa. The continued high levels of corruption, reassert the need for a better understanding if mobile phones, if prolific enough, can be an effective tool against corruption. Through a literature review of ten years M4D and ICT4D research on mobiles as a citizens-controlled tool for (a) accessing government information either directly or through citizens’ crowd-sourcing of information and (b) mobilization to demand greater government transparency, as well as,(c) instantaneous reporting of corruption in East Africa; this study attempts to gauge the status of this research field. The review included the ten highest ranking open access ICT4D journals, and six journals from parent disciplines;information system and development studies, as well as conference proceedings from the M4D conferences, and the SIG Globdev Workshops. The review concludes that earlier optimism around mobiles’ potential to support citizens’ counter-corruption actions, has not resulted in a significant body of research. Nor does the literature provide any substantive clues as to why this urgent topich as not been explored more fully.
Understanding the role of ICT for development is at the core of ICT4D research. However, prevailing research in this field most often focuses on access or readiness of a technology, or on the outcomes of the technology use. Less attention has been paid to understand the mechanism of the technology use that leads to the outcomes. The question of why ICT in a development context sometimes work and sometimes does not work still remains a subject of enquiry. To enhance our understanding in this regard, we propose to use the concept of affordances to unfold the “black boxed” nature of ICT. We revisited a case from Kenya to illustrate the application of affordances in a ICT4D context. The findings show that the benefits of ICT can be harnessed only if the users in the underprivileged communities can perceive and actualize the affordances of the ICT. However, what is ICT affordances, and how people perceive and actualize the affordances in the context of developing countries are the issues that we delve in this paper