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Implementing a contextualized IT curriculum: ambitions and ambiguities

Published: 13 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

In this article we report the combined findings from an ethnographic field study and action research on implementation of a newly founded IT program in rural Tanzania. We have found that the competences and skills of IT professionals in developing countries differ from the competences and skills of IT professionals in industrialized countries. Also workable pedagogical approaches, students' educational backgrounds, teachers' level of education, attitudes towards university education, aims of education, organizational and administrative frameworks, and people's motivations differ between industrialized and developing countries. We report some ways in which developers of functioning, sustainable, relevant, and motivating IT programs in developing countries face different challenges than their industrialized-world counterparts. We finish this paper with a number of lessons learned that we hope to be useful for other people undertaking similar projects in the developing world.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
Koli '08: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research
November 2008
127 pages
ISBN:9781605583853
DOI:10.1145/1595356
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 13 November 2008

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  • (2017)Developing a Contextualized Information Systems Curriculum for an Emerging EconomyTHE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES10.1002/j.1681-4835.2012.tb00381.x54:1(1-19)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2017
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