Ingrid Siebörger

Developing communities of practice within and outside higher education institutions

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are largely built on the assumption that learning is an individual process best encouraged by explicit teaching that is, on the whole, separated from social engagement with those outside the university community. This perspective has been theoretically challenged by those who argue for a social constructivist learning theory and a more collaborative approach to learning. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) afford lecturers and students an opportunity for extending the boundaries of a learning experience, not merely beyond the lone individual, but beyond the limits of discipline boundaries within a specific university community and beyond the institution into the local community. This paper illustrates how a collaborative effort between lecturers and students from the Computer Science and Education Departments at Rhodes University, teachers from the local community, the provincial Department of Education and a non-governmental organisation developed into an unfolding virtual and physical community of practice which enabled ICT take-up in a number of schools in the Grahamstown District, South Africa. This discussion of what has become known as the e-Yethu project provides an example of how ICTs, underpinned by the insights of social constructivism, the notion of ‘community of practice’ and in particular Hoadley and Kilners C4P Framework for Communities of Practice, can serve to help HEIs understand ways in which ICTs can provide opportunities for developing collaborative learning within HEIs, and between the HEI and the local community.

Enabling and constraining ICT practice in secondary schools: case studies in South Africa

The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education is being seen as a way of widening access to education, particularly in developing countries. This paper addresses the issue of ICT implementation in secondary schools and focuses specifically on the practices that enable or constrain the successful implementation of ICT for teaching and learning activities. It reflects upon the lessons learned from a collective case study undertaken in 12 of the 13 secondary schools in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. School principals and designated IT teachers were interviewed and on-site infrastructure audits conducted. This paper identifies a number of key enabling and constraining factors surrounding practical issues, including sufficient hardware, appropriate software and affordable connectivity, sufficient technical support and training, policy-related issues such as the role of national, provincial and school policy, the vital contribution of principal leadership and champion teachers as well as ongoing teacher professional development coupled with a willingness to change.

The Expansion of the Siyakhula Living Lab: A Holistic Perspective

In this paper we discuss the recent expansion of network connectivity within the Siyakhula Living Lab. This is part of an ICT-for-development project located in a rural area on the Wild Coast of South Africa. Thus far, five schools in the area have been the primary points of access to the network for the surrounding communities. Thanks to external funding, eleven more schools will be connected. Consistent with the Living Lab approach, the expansion needs to take into account technical as well as social aspects. Technical challenges relate mainly to the constraints of working in a rugged, mountainous terrain with poor road and electricity infrastructure and harsh environmental conditions such as dust and temperature variances. Social challenges relate to obtaining the buy-in of the local community and to reaching consensus on the criteria for the expansion. In this paper we account for the preliminary work which led to the implementation plan. We hope our experience will inform similar interventions in other parts of Africa.

Research Testbed Networks: Practical Tools for Service Delivery?

The Telkom Centre of Excellence (CoE) at Rhodes University, housed in the Computer Science department was opened in 1997. The CoEs focus on Distributed multimedia service platforms soon showed that the technology being researched could be applied in the disadvantaged peri‐urban communities. The CoE has thus concentrated its research on building a testbed network that delivers real services to real users. In 2007, the testbed was extended to include a marginalised rural area in the Siyakhula Living Lab. The greatest factor in the sustainability of the CoE testbed network has been maintaining usefulness to all the stakeholders over the last 12 years. Industrial funding, University outreach goals and research goals could all be harmonised, while sustaining the delivery of high quality informatics services in the community. This paper presents a brief case study of the communications network testbed and how it was applied to the Development Informatics space. It analyses the roles played by stakeholders in either assisting and sustaining or obstructing the service delivery. It makes key recommendations on best practices for research networks that can also bring informatics to disadvantaged communities. It shows how testbeds for the research of new technologies can be designed so as to allow Development Informatics work to take place on such networks.

Evaluating a mobile visualization system for service delivery problems in developing countries

MobiSAM is a project aimed to increase citizen participation in local government using mobile devices in order to further the reach and usefulness of the Social Accountability Monitoring (SAM) methodology to ordinary citizens. The project began in 2011 and there have been a number of HCI interventions over the years that have been undertaken to inform the design and subsequent redesign of the system based on the results of a number of evaluations. This paper begins by discussing the interaction design lifecycle model, illustrating how the different interventions were undertaken as part of the cycles that have been involved to date. It then provides details on two such interventions: an evaluation of the navigation and visualization aspects of the MobiSAM client application; and the evaluation of a streamlined app aimed to simplify the process of reporting problems with service.

Digital Inclusion: A Model for e-Infrastructure and e-Services in Developing Countries

A large portion of the South African population is still not connected in a productive manner to the Internet, despite the existence of a government plan for public broadband, ‘SA Connect’. One reason for this could be the lack of an appropriate model, through which connectivity can be diffused in a meaningful way through all areas of South Africa. This paper presents the model developed over more than a decade of experimentation in real life settings in the Siyakhula Living Lab, a joint venture between the universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare, South Africa. The model proposes the ‘Broadband Island’ as basic e-infrastructure unit, which clusters nearby points-of-presence hosted in schools. In each Broadband Island is located an applications integration platform, TeleWeaver, which monetizes channels of access to the local community, to support the e-infrastructure while providing useful services to the population and the Government.

The network society: A model for computing infrastructure in South African schools

Worldwide computers are being used in schools for, amongst other things, developing the knowledge and skills required for citizens to be able to operate within the 21st Century Information Age. Realising the potential of technology in uplifting the lives of its citizens the South African government has proposed the National Broadband Plan (SA Connect). However, unfortunately this plan only addresses the networking aspect of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). In this paper we investigate appropriate Information Technologies for schools in the light of SA Connect, and propose a model for the computing infrastructure required in South African schools in order to support access to and adoption of technology and networks. This model is based on our multi-year experimentation in the Siyakhula Living Lab.

Mobile visualisation techniques for large datasets

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices and data demands, it seems appropriate to provide mobile users with tools to understand information on their devices. Visualisations can be quick and powerful aids for data analysis and information acquisition. This paper discusses the visualisation and interaction techniques that exist on the mobile platform. It further discusses the design and development of a visualisation application that uses categorical and geographic data on the mobile platform followed by a description of a user study conducted to investigate the appropriateness of the developed mobile visualisation application. The paper further presents some of the initial findings from the user study and discusses lessons learned in visualising large geographical and categorical data sets on mobile devices.

A Comparison of Four End-User Devices as Thin Clients for Public Access to the Internet in Poor Communities

In poor areas, where ICT infrastructure is being deployed with developmental aims, there is a need to provide appropriate, sustainable technologies that meet the needs of the local community. Current trends for ICT interventions favour the use of mobile user equipment, such as tablets and cellphones, but we think that they are inappropriate to allow production as opposed to mainly consumption of digital content, at least for the foreseeable future. Thus our objective is to reduce the cost of deployment of traditional communal Internet Access Points using PCs. In this paper we compare four candidate computers to be used as thin clients in such settings, according to seven different categories. Our study identifies the strengths, weaknesses and problems of each device, and concludes with recommendations for anybody wishing to deploy such devices as Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) thin clients in a public Internet Access Point.

The Use of Interactive Whiteboards to Support the Creation, Capture and Sharing of Knowledge in South African Schools

This paper illustrates how interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have been used to support the dynamic creation, capture and sharing of knowledge in primary and secondary schools in South Africa. It reports on the findings of a feasibility study undertaken by the Eastern Cape Department of Education to determine the perceived benefits and drawbacks of teachers and learners of using IWBs in the classroom. The research highlights how both teachers and learners can critically engage with multiple sources of information to construct their own knowledge, aiding learners in the learning process and helping teachers to scaffold that learning process. The study illustrates that IWBs have the potential to be beneficial in the South Africa classroom by affording teachers and learners a new medium through which they can create, capture and share knowledge.