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On the topic more generally I found the original text by Rogers and a summary of his main arguments around diffusion of innovations theory. You say when in comes to understanding the diffusion of innovations on the continent, the often repeated phrase is that “there is little research.”
My take is that there is quite a bit of research on mobile learning in particular from colleagues in Africa although they might not use this particular theory. Often case studies on social media such as the use of Facebook or WhatsApp for educational purposes. Last year e/merge had an online conference called Transform, here is a link to the proceedings. There is quite a spread of research here. Colleagues can assist with citations and links to more research or articles they may have read.
I was involved as a research assistant during the pilot phase of a laptop project at UCT. The project now includes tablets. Devices are given to financial aid students in particular courses at UCT. Colleagues are contributing towards a symposium next week which features 5 institutions in SA. I was also involved in a cross-institutional report for Universities SA and we all contributed short position pieces on various topics.
My sense is that ‘technology’ is very broad… and different ‘technologies’ are perhaps a bit more ubiquitous than others, such as mobile phones in Afrikan countries. By technologies are we talking about devices or tools or both?
When you say ‘little research’, what are you claiming there is little research about? What do you want to find out?
I would think technologies are both tools and devices, although I would think devices fall into a subset category of tools.
The thing that strikes me about your comment, Nicola, is how you lead with mentioning tools and devices. More specifically, with the laptop project – it is interesting that the focus is on giving devices to students. Can you share a little more about the problem the devices were meant to solve? And, also, what the support networks (behind the devices) consisted of? To help provide context for these questions, I’ll introduce a field guide on Human-Centered Design (HCD) from IDEO: http://www.designkit.org/resources/1
The field guide begins with an analysis of one’s assumptions of an existing problem. In other words, the question of “do we really know enough about the situational context to move forward with a solution” often leads the diffusion of innovations.
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