A sustainability framework for mobile technology integration in resource-constrained schools: a case study in South Africa

The importance of sustainability for ICT4D projects has been acknowledged but there remains, however, a lack of frameworks to guide the long-term sustainability of mobile technology integration to support teaching. The diversity of contexts complicates the development of a consolidated view of how to sustain mobile technology integration into teaching. This study sought to investigate and develop a sustainability framework for mobile technology integration in schools in resource-constrained environments in South Africa (SFMTIS). The Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) was applied to answer the research questions and to iteratively develop the SFMTIS artifact. The main philosophy which guided the research is pragmatism. Interpretivism was applied, when a case study was used, to refine and validate the framework within the DSRM process model. This research was undertaken from 2014 to 2017 and the SFMTIS was developed in three phases. Based on the review of the existing literature, an initial framework was synthesised in Phase 1. A systematic literature review was conducted to investigate mobile technology integration in the South African basic education system as well as ICT4D sustainability models and frameworks. The SFMTIS sustainability dimensions, as abstracted from the literature, include financial, political, social/cultural, technological, environmental and pedagogical sustainability. In Phase 2 of the research a case study was done to investigate the perspectives held by teachers and district officials regarding mobile learning integration in the schools. The findings were used to improve the initial SFMTIS. The case study involved teachers from schools that had formerly participated in the ICT for rural education and development (ICT4RED) initiative who were selected through purposive sampling to participate in this research as well as district officials from the same school district. The ICT4RED initiative is a large-scale South African government research, development and implementation initiative which was carried out over a period of three years, from 2012 to 2014, at one of the school districts in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The initiative investigated ways in which ICTs can be integrated into teaching and learning in rural areas. The findings from the interviews with teachers and district officials, provided evidence which confirmed the value of the sustainability dimensions identified in literature. The study highlighted financial and technical support mechanisms required for the sustainable iv deployment of ICTs. The research findings indicate that communication and coordination at all levels of the education system, micro (school), meso (school circuit and district) and macro (provincial and national) are essential for ensuring sustainability. The findings highlighted some specific issues related to institutional challenges. This motivated the proposition of the institutional dimension to represent the structure, processes and practices at micro, meso and macro levels of the education system. The intermediate SFMTIS was refined by applying the findings of the case study to the initial framework. In Phase 3 the intermediate framework was presented to the teachers and district officials who had formerly been interviewed during the development of the SFMTIS, as well as other experienced individuals who had been involved in the implementation of the ICT4RED initiative, for their expert evaluations. The expert reviewers’ feedback was applied to refine the intermediate SFMTIS and aided in the development of the final SFMTIS. The research contributes to theory by developing the theoretically grounded, evidence-based SFMTIS, thus contributing to praxis and adding new knowledge of a focal theory that addresses sustainable mobile technology integration in schools in resource-constrained environments.Information SciencePh. D. (Information Systems

The antecedents of e-learning adoption within Italian corporate universities: A comparative case study

The implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in business education appears to be influenced by a number of organizational issues, such as culture and technological sophistication. However, extant research has had very little to say about the antecedents that shape the adoption and diffusion of ICT across companies. In order to shed light on the phenomenon under investigation, this paper presents a comparative case study between five Italian companies that have instituted a corporate university. By distinguishing companies in typical cases and deviant cases with regard to the extensive use of e-learning technologies, our findings provide some useful insights about the antecedents that make companies more or less prone to employ the new frontiers of technology in their CUs

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)

Mixed-methods research: a new approach to evaluating the motivation and satisfaction of university students using advanced visual technologies

The final publication is available at link.springer.comA mixed-methods study evaluating the motivation and satisfaction of Architecture degree students using interactive visualization methods is presented in this paper. New technology implementations in the teaching field have been largely extended to all types of levels and educational frameworks. However, these innovations require approval validation and evaluation by the final users, the students. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of applying mixed evaluation technology are discussed in a case study of the use of interactive and collaborative tools for the visualization of 3D architectonical models. The main objective was to evaluate Architecture and Building Science students’ the motivation to use and satisfaction with this type of technology and to obtain adequate feedback that allows for the optimization of this type of experiment in future iterations.Postprint (author’s final draft

Teaching telecommunication standards: bridging the gap between theory and practice

©2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Telecommunication standards have become a reliable mechanism to strengthen collaboration between industry and research institutions to accelerate the evolution of communications systems. Standards are needed to enable cooperation while promoting competition. Within the framework of a standard, the companies involved in the standardization process contribute and agree on appropriate technical specifications to ensure diversity and compatibility, and facilitate worldwide commercial deployment and evolution. Those parts of the system that can create competitive advantages are intentionally left open in the specifications. Such specifications are extensive, complex, and minimalistic. This makes telecommunication standards education a difficult endeavor, but it is much demanded by industry and governments to spur economic growth. This article describes a methodology for teaching wireless communications standards. We define our methodology around six learning stages that assimilate the standardization process and identify key learning objectives for each. Enabled by software-defined radio technology, we describe a practical learning environment that facilitates developing many of the needed technical and soft skills without the inherent difficulty and cost associated with radio frequency components and regulation. Using only open source software and commercial of-the-shelf computers, this environment is portable and can easily be recreated at other educational institutions and adapted to their educational needs and constraints. We discuss our and our students' experiences when employing the proposed methodology to 4G LTE standard education at Barcelona Tech.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

An Experience-Connected e-Learning System with a Personalization Mechanism for Learners’ Situations and Preferences

This paper presents an “experience-connected” e- Learning system that facilitates users to learn practical skills of foreign language by associating knowledge and daily-life experiences. “Experience-Connected” means that the users of this system receive personalized and situation-dependent learning materials automatically. Knowledge associated to users’ daily-life has the following advantages: 1) provides opportunities to learn frequently, and 2) provides clear and practical context information about foreign language usage. The unique feature of this system is a dynamic relevance computation mechanism that retrieves learning materials according to both preference relevance and spatiotemporal relevance. Users of this system obtain appropriate learning materials, without manual and time-consuming search processes. This paper proves the feasibility of the system by showing the actual system implementation that automatically broadcasts the media-data of foreign language learning materials to smart-phones

Strategies for mlearning integration : evaluating a case study of staging and scaffolding mlearning integration across a three-year bachelor’s degree

This paper outlines the third iteration of integrating mobile web 2.0 within a Bachelors level course. An analysis and comparison of the impact of mobile web 2.0 across all three years of the 2009 course enables the development of implementation strategies that can be used to integrate mlearning into other tertiary courses, and inform the design of further Product Design mlearning integration iterations

The TESSA OER Experience: Building sustainable models of production and user implementation

This paper offers a review of the origins, design strategy and implementation plans of the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) research and development programme. The programme is working to develop new models of teacher education, particularly school based training, including the creation of a programme webspace and an extensive bank of Open Educational Resources. This paper identifies key research findings and literature which informed the TESSA approach and activity design. Drawing on participant experiences in different development activities and data generated in development testing activities, I offer a personal account of the programme to date. The paper concludes by suggesting a pattern of resource making and design that could be adopted by other programmes serving parallel development needs

Educational change and ICT: an exploration of priorities 2 and 3 of the DfES e-strategy in schools and colleges: the current landscape and implementation issues

Landscape review of integrated online support for learners and collaborative approaches to personalised learning activities