A methodological framework for ICT roadmap development for rural areas

The use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can support sustainable development within societies. ICTs have been supported by governments, private companies, non-governmental organisations, academic institutions and individuals. However, technological changes have made most ICT initiatives haphazard due to poor planning. There is no systematic plan on how to deploy services, infrastructure and devices especially in rural areas. For instance, in some cases, computers have been donated to communities in rural areas yet they are not being used, and ICT services have been deployed without the supporting ICT infrastructure. One of the solutions to addressing these ICT challenges is through the use of roadmaps to guide ICT solution implementation. This thesis proposes an ICT roadmap methodological framework to improve ICT roadmap development for rural ICT solutions. A composite methodological approach was employed in this research. This involves the use of qualitative research techniques such as participant observation, design exercises, workshops, focus groups and individual interviews supported by ethnographic studies. The Siyakhula Living Lab in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa was used as the case study. Studies were conducted to identify the current state of ICTs in rural areas, the future of ICTs and overview of roadmap developments. Rural users in South Africa, ICT experts in Europe and Africa, government officials and academic institutions were engaged to understand the current ICT planning, developments and needs. The author found that there are variations in individual ICT services required by rural users but, most ICT services in need fall mainly in the areas of health, education, entrepreneurship, agriculture and employment creation for rural people. These services require ICT devices and infrastructure which include computer peripherals, mobile phones, radios, televisions and wireless infrastructure, mobile infrastructure, satellites and broadcasting infrastructure respectively. It was found that the common future ICT projections expected in rural areas include: growth of mobile usage, social networking, increase internet services and localization of services. The roadmap framework is built based on the current state of ICTs, trends in ICTs, future technological projections and the plans currently been initiated in African continent. The ICT roadmap methodological focuses on how roadmaps could accommodate infrastructure, services and ICT devices to reach rural people. This should help rural users to be able to access public services within their respective communities using available ICT devices. ICT stakeholders could use the designed framework to improve the ICT roadmap development process for rural ICT users in Africa

Implementation of a rewards based negotiation module for an e commerce platform

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been widely deployed in developmental programs and this has lead to the creation of a new field – ICT for Development (ICT4D). Within the context of ICT4D, various e-services are being developed, including e-Commerce, e-Government, e-Health and e-Judiciary. ICT4D projects allow Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in rural areas to increase sales and gain a market share in the global market. However, many of these ICT4D projects do not succeed, because they fail to bring enough financial value to SMMEs due to the form they currently have. An obvious example is e-Commerce, which should be a source of revenue for business organizations, but most often is not. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a rewarding and negotiation application for a shopping portal to improve the marketing of products for rural entrepreneurs. The shopping portal has been set up for the Dwesa community, a marginalized area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The proposed system, called the Dwesa Rewarding Program (DRP) enables customers buying online to get points for some of the activities carried out on the shopping portal. It also allows customers to negotiate and make offers whilst purchasing and get rewarded for buying online. The novelty of the system is in its flexibility and adaptability. One achievement of this system is the establishment of negotiation rules which allows fairness in rewarding customers. This should in turn lead to increased sales on the e-Commerce platform in marginalized areas and subsequently increased effectiveness of ICT4D for socio-economic developmen

Lecturer Autoethnographies of Adjusting to Online Student Interactions during COVID-19

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed South African historically disadvantaged institutions, that had not yet reached advanced levels of technology use in teaching and learning, to find immediate solutions to salvage the disrupted academic year. Interactions with students, which had predominantly been face-to-face, shifted to various online platforms for lecturers to adopt emergency remote teaching approaches. Most of the lecturers were unprepared or incapacitated to make the shift to online environment. Studies have looked at the online teaching and learning experiences of students and lecturers during the COVID-19 pandemic but very few have taken an autoethographic approach to their inquiry and situated experiences in historically disadvantaged institutions. In this article, as lecturers, we use autoethnographies to provide an account of adjusting to interacting with students online during national lockdowns at a historically disadvantaged institution. The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) was applied to guide the study. This reflexive approach is valuable, as it captures professional encounters and reflections needed to understand the effects of rapid changes to teaching and learning in response to the pandemic. Given the education disparities that already existed between South African higher education institutions before COVID-19, the article contributes to the discourse on how historically disadvantaged institutions can advance higher standards of teaching and learning to serve students better. Our reflections point to the personal, technical and structural challenges of maintaining regular online interaction. Our findings show that different approaches and techniques were applied to adjust to virtual teaching and learning. As teaching and learning methodologies have the potential to ingrain social inequalities, we made recommendations on how to improve online interactions with students from historically disadvantaged contexts

A Customized Artificial Intelligence Based Career Choice Recommender System for a Rural University

Rapid technological developments have enabled users to be supported and guided in decision-making. An example of this is the ability of tertiary students to use technology to explore different career options and make informed decisions about their future. Notwithstanding the increasing use of technology in general, the technology for career guidance and personalized career recommendations in South Africa is still limited. There are some limiting factors such as the ever-looming challenge of limited access to technology, language barriers and cultural differences that are prevalent in rural areas. With this premise, this study collected quantitative data from students at an Eastern Cape University in South Africa, in which the students participated on how they use artificial intelligence tools and technologies in their career choice process. The study highlighted the need for bespoke, locally developed job assessment systems that are more effective and culturally appropriate for a South African university student, particularly in rural areas. Participants would prefer to be engaged, be part of and propose their suggestions on the developed career choice, as current ones do not exactly refer to their context. Tailor made and customized career guidance solutions with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities have more chances of adoption and usage by targeted user

Codesigning A Big Data Analytic Tool for Girl Child Learner Drop Out from Eastern Cape Province -South Africa

Developing sustainable solutions is critical for adoption of digital solutions. As the high number of learners dropping out of school continues to increase, it is critical to find innovative ways of predicting and preventing high drop out. Current literature has documented a number of factors that influence learner drop out. Innovative ideas, techniques and activities have been undertaken to motivate learners to stay at school. It is unfortunate that most of the initiatives have not helped to avoid drop out of learners. The study is based on a mixed approached that was used targeting female learns from Oliver Tambo District in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa which consists of face-to-face engagements and community codesigning approach. A variety of factors were presented as drop out reasons. These factors represent large data sets that are available to affect learners. A big data analytic tool was co-designed involving key stakeholders in education since they also have an influence on learners. Emerging technologies such as machine learning and big data analytics were applied to produce the presented tool

Technology Adoption Readiness in Disadvantaged Universities during COVID 19 Pandemic in South Africa

The Covid 19 pandemic has affected hundreds of million lives and taken over four million lives to date. As a result, governments and policymakers see the need for emergency action to reduce the spread of the virus. In an attempt to contain the virus, governments and policymakers worldwide introduced a different range of prote ction measures and interventions to change their citizen's behaviours , primarily through social distancing, interprovince lockdown, stay at home strategies, and quarantines. The different lockdown measures have created unique and challenging conditions wit h no documented equivalent in the education sector. A significant effect was that many Higher Education institutions worldwide were not ready to switch to online teaching and learning when the governments announced the sudden lockdown. This study discusses the effect s of the Covid 19 pandemic on South Africa Higher Education Institution s , focusing on the historically disadvantaged universities. The study went further to evaluate the readiness of lecturers from selected disadvantaged universities to adopting online teaching and learning by applying the Technology Readiness Acceptance Model (TRAM). Quantitative data was collected through an online questionnaire. Results show that the higher the average of optimism and innovativeness among the respondents' poin t towards the readiness of adopting technology. On the other hand, higher the average insecurity and discomfort show the uneasiness of adopting technologies by the respondents

Antecedents of Blackboard Adoption by Lecturers at a South African Higher Education Institution – Extending GETAMEL

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become central to the teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). The aim of this paper was to test the constructs of the General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for e-Learning (GETAMEL) and some selected constructs from the other Technology Acceptance Models (TAM) on adoption and use of Black-board LMS by lecturers at a selected university in South Africa. A cross sec-tional electronic survey was carried out to obtain data from 101 lecturers, who were conveniently sampled to express their perceptions on BLMS. Structural equation modelling, utilising SmartPLS3, was used to analyse the collected data. The results confirmed that behavioural intention (BI) influ-enced actual use whilst BI in turn was influenced by perceived usefulness (PU) and subjective norm (SN). Attitude was influenced by PU but had no significant effect on BI. The external factors that influenced perceived ease of use (PEOU) included perceived enjoyment (ENJOY), system self-efficacy (SE), and system anxiety (ANX) whilst PU was influenced by job relevance (JR) and PEOU. University management at the HEI under study should con-sider the determinants of SE, ENJOY and ANX if they need effective utilisation of Blackboard by the lecturers. The study findings imply that a LMS that is adopted and used is one that is considered useful, otherwise users will be reluctant to use it. The findings can assist HEIs in preparing their lecturers before implementation of any e-learning systems, such as training and technical support, thus, enhancing LMS adoption and utilisation. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on antecedents of LMS adoption and use. In addition, it establishes the applicability of GETAMEL in a South African university context

Exploring digital transforming challenges in rural areas of South Africa through a systematic review of empirical studies

The current Covid-19 pandemic has led to the need for more profound research on the digital state in developing nations. As societies aim to adopt technologies, there are critical challenges at hand. The digital divide issue has been luring in modern-day society, particularly the various challenges societies face from harnessing the full benefits that Information and Communication Technology can deliver. Unquestionably, an increase in access to enabling technologies has great potential to close the disparities between social groups. This paper presents the results of a systematic review based on the PRISMA protocol that aims to investigate the digital transforming challenges encountered in rural communities within South Africa. The systematic review was conducted using a comprehensive selection of scientific databases as reference sources, allowing access to several related studies. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined and applied to each retrieved article to choose those that satisfy the current study. From 233 retrieved articles, 32 were included. To further understand the main causes of these challenges, three major problems were identified: socio-economic, technology, and politics. Each of the 32 articles was critically studied to understand their findings before grouping them under any of the identified categories. Based on our findings, we highlighted other key challenges and recommendations to enhance ICT adoption and integration into rural areas in South Africa