ICTlogy

Publishing ICT4D Research
Chairs: G. Harindranath

Geoff Walsham
Reflections on ICT4D research publishing after a Cape Town workshop.

Where to publish:

• Go for a portfolio approach — conferences plus a range of journals.
• Choose your journal with care — read back issues, etc.
• Consider co-authoring some of your papers with a more experienced author.
• Probably avoid the so-called top journals in early career.
• Cover (slightly) different topics and different approaches for different audiences.
• When co-authoring, let the expert in the field of the journal lead the article, and keep your leadership for the topics/subjects/journals you’re an expert on.

The review process:

• Key initial goal: get your paper past the SE/AE screen and about to the reviewers.
• Cover every point made by the reviewers and say how you have responded.
• You can disagree with particular points made by the reviewers but you need to say why.
• Focus on the key critical points which are being raised by the reviewers and editors.

What to do with a ‘reject’?

• Consider carefully the reasons for rejection.
• In most cases, revise the paper and submit it elsewhere.
• Don’t give up, academic careers are marathons not sprints.

Planning for future writing:

• Geenrate a realistic annual work plan.
• Think about support mechanisms: colleagues, conferences, seminar groups, etc.
• Try out your material on others: take every possible opportunity to do this.

Discussion

Q: What about social networks an open publishing? A: This is a good approach to broaden your portfolio, but it should not be your only strategy. Indeed, still most places select or evaluate on a mainly a publishing-basis.

Cathy Urquhart
Publishing ICT4D research in the Information Systems area. Future themes in ICT4D research in Information Systems.

Collaboration with senior peers is beneficial, and you can offer the senior colleague something in exchange too (fresh ideas, more time, etc.)

You can’t put your eggs into just one basket.

Publishing ICT4D in Information Systems:

• In Business Schools, increasing pressure to publish to the Association of Business Schools (ABS) journal rankings — many candidate journals for ICT4D not listed.
• On the plus side, there are some mainstream Information Systems journals open to ICT4D research.
• If we only publish in Information Systems journals, what does that do for our relationships with other areas, e.g. development studies, in what is a multidisciplinary field?
• In a field that aims for impact, what is the consequence of only publishing in Information Systems academic journals?

Future themes in ICT4D research in information Systems:

• Theorising ICT for Development — call for Papers in Information Systems journal: we need more theory.

The politics of ICT4D — call for papers in the International Journal of e-Politics: we need more policy.

Discussion

Q: We are talking about publishing only in terms of academic careers. Notwithstanding, we might have other interests, as reaching the practitioner or, over all, making an impact at the policy-level. Maybe it is more important to publish in newspapers or write policy-briefs.

Shirin Madon
Publishing ICT4D Research… some personal reflections.

ICT4D is no more a ‘niche’ area. But this makes it more important to have a strategy, to know when to publish during your project, whether your article will be career-focused or impact-aimed. What kind of strategy?

Some considerations are due on whether to publish on open or closed journals, or to self-archive and to find ways to circumvent the ‘closeness’ of the system.

We should try and publish in outlets that make sense for the audiences that read them. Sometimes this includes NGO newsletters, newspapers, etc.

Tim Unwin

Nobody reads academic papers.

• Journal papers are form or professional exclusivity. Because of the need to publish, there is a wide range of bad literature being published. The publishing norms are Anglo-Saxon-made. Peer review is not naive, it is about gate-keeping.
• Know the rules of the place you want to be published in. Get in touch with the referees.
• If we want to share of ideas, the Internet is the platform. Blogs get hundreds of times more read than academic papers. How do we actually fund publication? There still is a huge value in the traditional role of editors.
• There is a conspiracy to create an ICT4D field. Do not constrain your ideas, change happen at the edges. Everyone is in their silos and do not read each others’ papers.
• Books are hugely important. Books allow more room to include and expand ideas.
• Never add your supervisors in your papers, unless they definitely wrote and/or contributed significantly to the paper.
• We have to find more places where research can happen. We have to move out of the US/Europe and find innovation where it is happening.

Discussion

Geoff Walsham: we have to differentiate research with dissemination. The latter includes writing in practitioner papers, newspapers, doing consultancy, etc.

Q: How do funders dictate the research agenda? Shirin Madon: It is a good thing that funders ask for a multidisciplinary approach, as this forces researchers to join forces. Tim Unwin: researchers always have the choice to refuse funding if it does not go in line with what ethics in research suggest.

More information

• Live recording of the session.
• On publishing in ICT4D, by Tim Unwin.

(NOTE: most energetic session, full of non-reportable debate).

Revi Sterling, Heather Underwood
Technology ‘Teach-In’

Weigel and Waldurger (2004)
Unwin (2008)

Three possible classifications that should help in choosing the appropriate technology:

• Hi vs. low cost of access.
• Individual use vs. communal use.
• Ease or difficulty of use.

What are you trying to do? Who are you trying to reach? What are your limitations? What is the community baseline? What is acceptable to the community? What is legal? What is already there? What are the climate conditions like?

(The session included a simulation role-game where different scenarios were presented and there was a discussion on how the different needs could be approached with the appropriate technology… or without it).

More information

Weigel, G. & Waldburger, D. (Eds.) (2004). ICT4D – Connecting People For A Better World. Lessons, Innovations and Perspectives of Information and Communication Technologies in Development.

Unwin, T. (Ed.) (2009). ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development.

Katie Willis, David Simon
Development Theory ‘Teach-In’

Development can be understood as employment, human rights and freedom, environment conservation, education, consumption, etc.

The ‘resources cost hypothesis‘: if your country finds a valuable resource for the rest of the world (e.g. oil, diamonds, gold, etc.) your country may be exploited, screwed and turned into ruins. Indeed, slavery and other related practices have traditionally been the way to either get rich or get exploited, depending on the side you are in.

• What does development include?
• How should it be achieved?
• Where should development take place?
• At what scale should development take place?
• Who should decide what development it and how it should be achieved?

Modernisation Theory

The idea that development is about progress, innovation, modernization. Coined in a post-World War II and Cold War geopolitical context.

Walt W. Rostow (1960). The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto.

It is normally characterized by a top-down approach, based on the more economically developed countries and the Global North experience and led by governments or large international agencies. One size fits all. “Do the right thing and you will end up where we are”.

Dependency Theory

Developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it is based on the experience of less economically developed countries. It analyses the glogal economic systems and its relationships of dependence of poorer people to the economic elites.

Andre Gunder Frank (1967). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America.

It triggered several policy responses, like greate4re protectionism, policies of import substitution to help domestic industrialization, revolutions and the implementation of communist forms of economic and political organization.

It is a very deterministic approach and takes a an approach that looks at reality/economies as a very static thing.

Neoliberalism

Stated 1980s onwards (now mainstream in international development thinking), it stresses on the role of the market rather than the state.

The key policy dimensions focus on privatisation, reduction of state expenditure, currency devaluation, opening up of domestic economy to foreign investment, etc. It is usually implemented through structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRPSPs).

Normally, these plans come with strings attached: if a government does not apply certain measures, it will not get more aid for development, commerce agreements, and other kind of conditionings.

Bottom-up / Grassroots Development

It comes as a response to preceived failure of top-down development from 1980s onwards. It features a rise of NGOs as key actors in development.

In some ways, some see it related with Neoliberalism, as it is NGOs, at the micro level, the ones addressing the problems of the population, instead of the State, at the macro level, the one doing it. It is local people the ones that drive change, that are champions of change, that leverage social capital, through participatory mechanisms, etc.

Grassroots development’s features are small-scale, it recognises diversity of developmetn goals, highly efficient, empowering, environmentally sustainable, many times having a very slow path because it requires consensus, etc.

Postcolonialism

After colonialism there is a recovery of ‘lost’ / subordinated identities

Thus, some conceptions of development go in the line of recovering, on the one hand, tradition and cultural heritage; but, on the other hand, also the productive practices that where abandoned but that might still be applicable and even beneficial and sustainable in its usual context.

Its critics state that it is driven by a fundamentally anti-Eurocentric feeling, that it is inherently post-modern, supposedly empowering, yet often exclusive and even elitist too.

Anti- and Post-Development

Anti-Development: rejecting development as corporate, capitalist, neocolonial perversion/betrayal. Emerged in the mid 1990s. We have to find a new vocabulary for development, find new resources (other than merely economic). More a critique and a call to start over again, rather than “anti-“.

Post-Development: moving beyond conventional development, rethinking/reinventing alternative visions of development. Leveraging local skills while introducing external input, like technology.

Technologies in Development

Not neutral in terms of applications and implications. Impacts often diverse by scale and social group, and with intended and unintended consequences. The technology itself might be neutral, but it is not once it is applied.

Socially contingent: winners and losers, cultural norms and values, progressives vs. conservatives. Quite usually richer people are amongst the winners, and poorer amongst the losers, often a matter of affordability.

How sustainable? Financially, technically, socially, politically.

The coevolutionary process: there are multiple relationships amongst values, the organization, the environment, knowledge and technology.

Discussion

Some state that Amartya Sen’s capabilities is but part of a neoliberalist approach, as it focuses on the freedom of choice and on empowering the individual.

We have seen that in recent decades the discussion has gone from the macro- to the micro-level, but ICTs are sort of being able to think again not only at the macro-level but, actually, at both levels at the same time, as many solutions are more or less equally applicable at the domestic and at the state level, or have an impact at both levels.

Paper Session: Gadgets

Impact of Low-Cost, On-Demand Information Access in a Remote Ghanaian Village
Clifford Schmidt, Trina Jean Gorman, Michael Shayne Gary, Andrew Azaabanye Bayor

Context: low income, low or none literacy, no electricity.

Try to see how to get on-demand information, which is difficult if you have to access a kiosk and wait for the operator to be there, for the information to be ready or available, etc.

The Talking Book is the the world’s most affordable, durable, audio device designed specifically for people who cannot read and who live without electricity. Local experts spread knowledge reliably and easily with no information loss. Rural teachers complement their lessons with interactive applications and audio books.

The Talking Book allows for listening to and recording of content.

How to implement it?

The chief of the village will be approached and he will provide contacts with the relevant people and institutions around.

Once the target users are identified, an average of 45′ training is needed to operate the device.

After a year of usage of the Talking Book to get information on agriculture, an impact assessment was performed in order to see how had their harvests changed and whether these changes had had any origin in the usage of the Talking Book. It appeared that most people had been using the Talking Book and applying its knowledge to their daily practices and that their harvests had significantly been better in comparison with those that had not used the Talking Book. The impact was even more evident indeed because most people applied the advice of the Talking Book only to a part of their crop, thus the comparison was even more easy to test.

One of the problem is that it had been younger people the ones that had been using more intensively (or at all) the devices. There was not, though, any difference at the education level: unlike what was expected, less literate people did not think that the device was for “smarter” people, but used it them too.

On-demand access to locally recorded information can have a positive impact and the Talking Book is a low-cost good option for that.

Managing Microfinance with Paper, Pen and Digital Slate
Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan, Sunandan Chakraborty, Pushkar V. Chitnis, Kentaro Toyama, Keng Siang Ooi, Matthew Phiong, Mike Koenig

There are people that prefer paper and others digital supports.

• Paper: tangible artefact; handwritten pen-based entry; familiar form.
• Digital: automatic digitization, ease of aggregation and distribution; real time prompts and corrections.

86M women participants i 6M microfinance self-help groups across India, linked with banks, decentralized, autonomous, self-run. They are active in leading social, political and economic initiatives,but limited financial leverage/growth.

The problem is that they do all their accountability records on paper, which means that sending data to the central station takes a lot of time, that there are recording errors, calculation errors, legibility errors, data are incomplete, etc.

How to retain the familiar work practice while improving the system? Improve meaning locally digitising adn processing, real time prompts for error correction and completeness, establishing of a single point of entry… and keeping it low cost.

A pilot was developed: a digital slate where you write on paper, but where writing is recognized and digitized automatically. For the field trial, three methods were compared: paper-only, digital slate and touch-screen only.

Digital slate and touch-screen prover to increase the amount of “paperwork” done per day. The average meeting transaction recording time also decreased, even more in the case of the touch-screen.

Concerning the user, 88% of them stated that they preferred “the machine to speak” (the machine saying the figures and passbook entry) and not having a writer saying the figures and passbook entry.

The device can also be applied in or used for legal records, in educational testing, healthcare records etc.

Paper Session: From ICT to Impact?

The Bank Account is not Enough: Examining Strategies for Financial Inclusion in India
Olga Morawczynski, David Hutchful, Nimmy Rangaswamy, Edward Cutrell

ICTs have been very successful at extending financial and transactional services.

NREGA is an Idian programme that guarantees 100 days of paid work, a payment that requires bank accounts, and which has raised the demand for them, and thus the need to manage them.

Notwithstanding, there is low usage of bank accounts, where 3/4 of them have almost no money and 1/5 are dormant / show no periodical movements.

Why is it so? A survey was performed to find the financial habits, the financial literacy and the technology-related issues with bank usage.

Usage was high among the high and middle earning groups. These informants exhibited the highest levels of financial literacy (while others e.g. were afraid of losing their money if put in the bank). They also used a more diverse set of financial instruments.

Usage was low among the low earning and NREGA dependent groups. These informants exhibited the lower levels of financial literacy. They also used a less diverse set of financial instruments.

Usage was higher among low earning informants who knew both services were available. These informants also had a more diverse portfolio than those who only knew about the disbursement service.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: did you control for the way people got their income (in kind, cash, transfer…)? A: In a first interview, people that had no interest (personal or objective) in banking were detected and separated from the rest of the interviewees. This project is aimed at people that potentially could benefit from a more intensive use of banking according to their profiles. Amongts those, though, there did not seem to be a major difference between the ways of getting the income and financial literacy, but on the exposure to financial information.

Understanding the Links Between ICT skills Training and Employability: An Analytical Framework
Maria Garrido, Joe Sullivan, Andrew Gordon

Understand the relationship between basic ICT skills training and employability; map the different roles that NGOs play in workforce development; build an analytical framework.

For 4 years 10 studies have been performed in 30 countries on a variety of NGO ICT training programmes.

Enter the employability factor: Employability helps us understand dynamic beyond jobs, the fact that you have greater skills may not translate into a job.

Narrowing the topic to immigrant women, ICT training and employability in the European Union. Women are migrating in greater numbers for the purpose of finding jobs. They account for more than 50% of the immigrant population in most European countries. They have double disadvantage in the labour market: as women and as migrants. Computer literacy is one of the assets that may make a change.

Interviews with women that had and had not taken part of ICT training in European NGOs. NGO traning matters: digital competences for immigrant women who did not participate in NGO training are lower. ICT training can encourage further training in other skills. Immigrant women with advanced skills are less likely to be unemployed, though no correlation between ICT skill level and employment status for women with non, basic or intermediate skills. The social space created b the training helped them to diversify their social networks.

Barriers: country of origin is a strong determinant of future sector of employment in host country, well above educational level. It is very difficult to get out of the socio-economic circle that the immigrant lands on when hitting the host country.

ICT skills training en employability framework:

• NGO factors: organizational characteristics; training programme characteristics.
• Personal factors: sense of self; workplace readiness; social networks.
• Environmental factors: labour market; public policy; social dynamics.

Takeaweays:

• From employment to employability.
• The role of NGOs in workforce employment.
• Three roles of ICT skills training: improves technical skills; catalyses the development of non-technical social and cultural skills.

Paper Session: Rarer Themes in Education

Beyond Strict Illiteracy: Abstracted Learning Among Low-Literate Users
Indrani Medhi, S. Raghu Menon, Edward Cutrell, Kentaro Toyama

Text-free user interfaces increase the success of use for a given amount of time training. What else is required for non-literate uses to reach the usage level of ICTs of literate users?

Videos have no text and thus do not require reading while providing text-like information.

In order to to perform an experiment, a community of female domestic helpers were chosen, with very low literacy levels, and to test whether videos on how to use a modern vacuum cleaner had any impact in the acquisition of skills by these illiterate women. Will users benefit from diversified examples as a way to learn abstract concepts?

Variants analysed were whether the users was or was not literate, and whether the user was or was not familiar with (a) the vacuum cleaner and (b) a specific vacuum cleaner. And videos included also these variables.

Diversified video (e.g. showing more than one type of vacuum cleaner) proved to be helping literate users, but not illiterate ones.

Beyond strict illiteracy, other aspects affected comprehension of video content: cognitive skills, social standing, intimidation by technology, visual organization, efficient processing of information, language taks, self-efficacy, etc. Even for tasks that do not require reading at all and where there is the context, there seem to be cognitive barriers that impede use in non-literate users.

Discussion.

Q: Won’t literate people have cognitive barriers too? A: Agreed. But technology and treatment of information imply a fool range of cognitive barriers that go from technological illiteracy to abstract thinking, etc.

Technology, Teachers, and Training: Combining Theory with Macedonia’s Experience
Laura Hosman, Maja Cvetanoska

Some factors behind the ‘computers in the classroom’ concept: technology changes but human nature does not; computers in the classroom… mission accomplished; major struggle in ICT4ED projects; Education and Psychology scholars theorising and writing; policy makers not listening… and as a result, teachers blamed over and over for tech project failures. Maybe the real problem is not acknowledging that innovation is a years-long process of change, not a one-time event; that teachers are key change agents but are often not treated accordingly; and that teachers need ongoing support and must be stakeholders in the innovation-adoption process.

Now, the issue of computers in the classroom has spread from developed to developing countries, with the added problem that (a) resources in developing countries are even more scarce but, notwithstanding (b) computers in the classroom are being introduced at an imprecedented speed and level.

Macedonia Connects is a USAID-led initiative to provide one computer lab per school in Macedonia, after the country succeeded at breaking the telecom monopoly and bringing affordable broadband wireless to the entire country. Prior to the technology deployment, all teachers were provided with technology and methodology training.

As most teachers’ concerns advance predictably, most of them can be addressed as they arise by leaders/change facilitators.

Key findings:

• 65% have not used a computer in class in previous two months
• 86% believe that the class is the place where to learn to use a computer.
• 72% use ICT for preparing teaching materials and tests.
• 51% spend a few hours a day with a computer.
• 30% use ICT for working with students.

Recommendations: set up a yearly ICT plan; involve teachers as stakeholders; recognize that change is a years-long process; don’t press for overnight success; support teachers in managing change.

SPRING: Speech and PRonunciation ImprovemeNt through Games, for Hispanic Children
Anuj Tewari, Nitesh Goyal, Matthew K. Chan, Tina Yau, John Canny and Ulrik Schroeder

MILLEE project: Mobile and immersive learning for literacy in emerging economies.

Pilot project in a school in California targeted to the Hispanic students (20 in total) with low English skills. Instead of mobile phones, it was decided that laptops would be used instead.

Challenges faced were key problems with English, issues with reading and writing, resistance to learning English, etc.

To do so, two games were designed (Zorro, based on Mario, and Voz.Guitar, based on Guitar Player) according to the needs and profiles of the students (that had previously been analysed). Movements required speech to be commanded and a speech recognizer was embedded so to tell whether the student was using the correct pronunciation.

two metrics were gathered: acoustic score gain percentages (measuring the improvement in the pronunciation of correct words) and word gain (correctly pronounced words). Score Acoustic and Word gains improved a little bit (though significantly) between control and treatment group.

Gender and pre-existing knowledge didn’t seem to play a role or be a factor.

Discussion

Ismael Peña-López: why pronunciation of English words was in English standards and not Spanish standards? Why (for surprise) put ‘ser-prize’ instead or ‘sur-prais’, which would have been the Spanish transcription? A: Some of the transcriptions were added ex-post and used the acknowledge standard. But, certainly, in future editions, there is a need to adapt the transcriptions to the linguistic realities of the target community.

Q: What was the teacher proficiency in English pronunciation? Q: The project was performed in a public classroom in California and had extended English teaching experience.