Software-export strategies for developing countries: A Caribbean perspective

The globalization of the software industry is seen to be driven in part by skill shortages in industrialised economies, the movement of software development practices away from centralised to more distributed modes and the spread of information and communication technologies to less developed economies, where skilled labour is available at lower costs. As such, a software export industry is sometimes seen as a means by which some non-industrialised countries can create competitive advantage. While many studies have explored the software-exporting strategies used by the more successful of these countries, little research has been done in other locations that lack some of the basic resources deemed necessary for success in this area. This paper describes two Caribbean software-outsourcing ventures in order to explore possible software-export strategies available within such atypical contexts. The role of government and degree of integration of the software outsourcer into the local context are found to feature significantly

Escorting pregnant prisoners —the experiences of women and staff:‘Quite a lot of us like doing it, because you get to see a baby, or you get to see a birth’

It is understood that pregnant women make up around 6% of the female prison population although precise numbers are not collated. There are limited qualitative studies published that document the experiences of pregnancy whilst serving a prison sentence. The gap in the evidence necessitated qualitative, ethnographic research of the pregnancy experience. The study took place during 2015-2016 and involved non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 28 female prisoners in three English prisons who were pregnant or had recently given birth. Ten members of prison and health care staff were also interviewed. One key theme which evolved from interviews with staff were their experiences of being on ‘bed watch’ with pregnant or labouring women. Additionally, a new typology of prison officer has emerged from this study: the ‘maternal’; a member of prison staff who accompanies pregnant, labouring women to hospital where the role of ‘bed watch officer’ can become that of a birth supporter. The officer (s) attending pregnant women in hospital have an important role to play and may have been ‘chosen’ by the woman. This paper provides narratives of these experiences and discusses the relationship of the bed watch officer who may be both guarding and supporting the woman. Pseudonyms are used throughout.Peer reviewe

Enhancing online climate change education: distance and conventional university collaboration for a Master's curriculum

See also a longer version: ‘Expanding Citizen and Practitioner Engagement with the Climate Change Challenge Through Collaborative Masters Curriculum, Open Educational Resources, E-learning Communities and Virtual Mobility’, presented at a conference of European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EDTU), Zermatt, Switzerland, September 2010 (www.eadtu.nl/.../Accepted%20Presentations%20for%20Newsletter.pd).This paper analyses the different ways in which both distance and conventional universities engage with learning and teaching. It argues that rather than seeing their roles as institutionally compartmentalised, there is much benefit in delivering online education through an institutional collaboration which develops synergies with a potential to contribute to citizen and professional practitioner empowerment, in this case, for debates about climate change. The example the paper draws on is that of a European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus) project ‘The Lived experience of climate change (LECH-e): interdisciplinary e-module development and virtual mobility’. The project brings together five distance and three conventional universities across six EU countries, plus the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), to create a Master’s curriculum in the area of climate change. It argues that universities across Europe have complementary strengths, both in terms of their disciplinary expertise and the ways in which they engage with students. Understanding the complex, real-world challenge of climate change requires a holistic approach which draws on these complementary strengths through collaborative work. Keywords: conventional universities; distance-learning universities; Master’s curriculum in climate change; collaboration

Field geographies

Philosophy section,A decade of innovative Geography (Article 689).Epistemological discourses such as those that have emerged from women’s studies (particularly feminism) and development studies have, however, shown geographers that there is a need to challenge the power assumptions embedded in the whole process of research, including methodological choices that can include or exclude. By tracing these discourses and using examples from these two disciplines, this article demonstrates how contemporary geography has taken on board some of the new methodological approaches that have thus transpired. In turn, this has enriched geographical enquiry, which is now, much as the subject itself, seen as a social construct requiring critical reflection and challenge

What influences student participation in asynchronous online discussions

Asynchronous online discussions are widely used in online and blended learning courses. Participation by adult learners can be encouraged by the contributions of teachers, and when online groups are given well-structured tasks that are assessed. The introduction of such discussions to a pre-existing short course in mentorship for qualified health care professionals offered an opportunity to compare participation by different groups studying concurrently. This was done by counting numbers of student contributions to twenty-four different online groups, regardless of length or content. This showed that the contribution of teachers was not an important factor in influencing student participation, though individual students who contributed prolifically tended to encourage their fellow group members to contribute more. These results may not be generalizable: the course was short, the discussions focused on a well-structured and assessed task, and the learners were mature

Connecting ICTs to development: The IDRC experience

Book ReviewAlthough the editors speciªcally deny that this book is a historical account, it only narrowly escapes that label. The book does attempt to consolidate some 15 years of International Development Research Centre (IDRC)–sponsored action research on ICT intervention projects undertaken in three main global regions, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. This “Herculean” (the editors’ words) effort does give the book the semblance of an epic, engrossing, all-encompassing exposition of the key concerns, actors, and events relevant to the IDRC’s ICT4D community. The book reports on the work of an IDRC-created thematic grouping identified as “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D), an acronym which has since gained widespread appeal in the academic research community (Heeks, 2006)