Archive for the ‘ICT and Education’ Category
Towards A Curriculum Adaptation Model for IS Undergraduate Education in sub-Saharan Africa
Improving information systems undergraduate education is an important measure for developing countries to take advantage of information and communication technologies for socio-economic development.
However, the current discourse on development of information systems education programmes in developing countries identifies a gap between proposed models for curriculum development and the adaptation to the local context. This paper argues for the need to address local adaptations when implementing a globally defined information systems curriculum for undergraduate education in sub-Saharan Africa. The case is made from a review of research on global information systems curriculum processes, lessons learned from development work in the sub-Saharan region in general, and from information and communication technologies implementations in particular. A question-based curriculum adaptation model is suggested which highlights relevant considerations in making sustainable and scalable local adaptations of a global curriculum model. The model provides a structural approach to aid the formulation of a locally adapted curriculum, where the global topics of an information systems education are merged with the areas of the local societal environment, the current status of information and communication technology infrastructure, and issues of sustainability.
Larsson, U. and Boateng, R. (2009). Towards A Curriculum Adaptation Model for IS Undergraduate Education in sub-Saharan Africa, Conference on Informatics Research in Scandinavia (IRIS 32), Norway, August 9-12 2009.
IT Education and Workforce Participation: A New Era for Women in Kenya
“ICTs are important tools that provide the [Sub-Saharan Africa] women access to lifelong learning and training, to productive assets, and to credit. Neglecting to give women access to these tools not only deprives them and their families of income, but reduces the skill-level of a nation’s human resource, limits national productivity, and bars a country from being competitive in the global market” (International Telecommunications Union, 2003).
While Sub-Saharan Africa women have historically assumed the role as both housewives and subsistence farmers, the reality is that these women have few opportunities to become a strong and viable part of modern economies in that region. However, this trend is changing with the exponential growth of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) globally, giving many historically poor and/or un-educated women access to computers, the Internet and other related technologies. Based on the work of an investigative team of four researchers from Kenya and the US, this paper examines the integration of women college students in the formal ICT work sector in Kenya. We do so by examining major bottlenecks and enablers to such integration from historical and contemporary perspectives. Using an interpretive approach, we conducted thirty-two interviews with women in an ICT program offered by a university in Kenya. Our findings indicate that women were highly optimistic, embracing ICT as a practical mechanism for achieving entrée into the labor market. However, they perceive significant structural barriers, such public policies that failed to facilitate the development of the ICT sector, gender discrimination by employers, and training which provided them with insufficient technical skills to enable them to effectively perform in the workplace. These findings largely reiterate the gendered perspectives found in similar studies conducted in other countries. However, what appear as global perspectives are informed by the local causes.
Mbarika, V., Cobb-Payton, F., Kvasny, L., & Amadi, A. (2007). IT education and workforce participation: a new era for women in Kenya? The Information Society, 23(1), 1-18.
