ICT Use in Higher Education in Eastern States of India

Information and communication technology (ICT) cannot be separated from our daily needs. ICT helps in reducing the disparity in wealth of educational resources. The uses of ICT in education add value in teaching and learning by enhancing the effectiveness of learning or by adding a dimension to learning. ICT may also be a significant motivational factor in students' learning. Uses of ICT in eastern states in India are lagging behind all other regions of India. In this background, the authors review the use of ICT by higher education students of four states in eastern India. They have attempted to find the factors responsible for use of ICT by the students. As the findings suggest, region, gender, education levels of households, type of courses, possession of computer and internet facility, consumption levels of households, and whether students stay in institutional hostel or not are the influencing factors to use of ICT.

Managing Information Technology Projects Using Agile Methodology

The management of information technology (IT) projects has experienced a shift from predictive and traditional project management methodology to more adaptive practices like Agile. Agile method and its developmental stages are a response to current business-changing trends and computing needs of society. The process assists in accelerating product delivery with rapid feedback and cost-conscious, consecutive iteration, distinguishing it from other traditional practices like the waterfall method. This chapter contributes to the existing literature by discussing agile project management for IT projects, with a specific case of the Africa IT project – the Books for Africa Project (hereafter called, Book Project). The first part of the chapter is used to review the literature on Agile IT projects. The Book Project as a case is an IT project, and it is discussed in detail in the chapter. The chapter concludes with transferable lessons for projects in developing countries, specifically those located in Sub-Saharan Africa.

A Theoretical Framework and Model of ICT Adoption and Inclusion in Developing Countries

Information and communication technology (ICT) adoption is cardinal to the sustainability of all societies, and it is the engine that can transform developing countries. This first chapter for the book uses the theories of poverty, human needs, and information poverty as the lenses to examine the framework for ICT adoption and inclusion. A world pyramid of needs that embodies information needs is developed. Information poverty is discussed along with the case of Coronavirus (COVID-19), the global pandemic that brought to a halt many communities in 2020. A mobile phone technology adoption model (MOPTAM) is presented as the framework to understanding ICT adoption and inclusion in developing countries.

Challenges and Opportunities of Information Management in Disaster Preparedness

The need to improve local disaster risk reduction (DRR) capacities in the Philippines is crucial in mitigating and responding to future disaster events. Despite being one the most disaster-prone countries in the world, national protocols remain inefficient, marred by corruption and poor inter-agency coordination. In addition, the current top-down and reactive practices have proven to be inadequate in responding to the needs of various stakeholders. The chapter examined these disaster preparation practices through a qualitative-descriptive research design and by using disaster information management (DIM) as the framework. In particular, the authors focused on the disaster preparedness practices of selected parishes of the Diocese of Legazpi and their partner organizations. The study also examined their information management practices and the current information and communications technology (ICT) tools in disaster preparedness.

Towards Career Development for High School Students

Globally, choosing the right tertiary programme for university (higher) education is quite a difficult task for students. A wide range of programmes are offered by the individual universities which differ in terms of delivery modes and entry requirements. Technology inclusion in the 21st century has paved the way for the proliferation of electronic/computing systems such as electronic counseling (e-counseling) and electronic learning (e-learning). By employing a quantitative research instrument (questionnaire) to ascertain technology acceptance of Senior High School (SHS) in Ghana, this chapter proposes a web-based (e-counseling) expert system which will match students' backgrounds with the right tertiary programme towards career development. Evaluation of our proposed approach suggests that majority of the selected students (80%) out of 100 who used the system accepted and embraced it. Such a system will therefore solve and improve career guidance, counseling, and development problems of SHS students in Ghana.

Adoption and Use of ICTs by Livestock Keepers for Improved Access to Livestock Information

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are very important tools for economic development and poverty reduction when used effectively by individuals in all economic sectors including agriculture. Urban livestock keepers need ICTs in their activities so that they can make informed decisions that can lead to improvement of the livestock industry. Despite its importance, ICT use is hindered by several factors including unawareness of the radio and television programmes and lack of computer skills. This chapter reveals the extent of use of ICTs by urban and peri-urban livestock keepers whereby different types of ICTs are used by urban livestock keepers to access livestock information, though some ICTs, for example, mobile phones are used more than other ICTs (radio and television). Internet is used by very few livestock keepers due computer illiteracy. Policy implications include improvement of the telecommunications services by the government through relevant bodies in order to facilitate more access to information through mobile phones, radio, television, and the internet.

Web 2.0 Technology in Libraries

Progress in information communication technology (ICT) has become the backbone for every branch of knowledge in academic arena and library, and information centers are not apart from it. Social networking is playing a significant role in serving to the library users. The chapter examines libraries and their importance in accepting the Web 2.0 phenomenon of social networking sites like Facebook Twitter, YouTube, and a number of social networking tools to enable libraries to engage with students in the virtual environment to promote library event and services, teaching and learning, and humanizing the concept of library and librarians. This chapter also focuses on the importance of social networking sites, which improve the professional relationships within the library profession and across the boundaries of particular national library education systems across the world, which is increasingly sharing information that ensures libraries are the head of changes in demands and needs of their users.

A State-of-the-Art Review of Nigerian Languages Natural Language Processing Research

African languages, including those that are natives to Nigeria, are low-resource languages because they lack basic computing resources such as language-dependent hardware keyboard. Speakers of these low-resource languages are therefore unfairly deprived of information access on the internet. There is no information about the level of progress that has been made on the computation of Nigerian languages. Hence, this chapter presents a state-of-the-art review of Nigerian languages natural language processing. The review reveals that only four Nigerian languages; Hausa, Ibibio, Igbo, and Yoruba have been significantly studied in published NLP papers. Creating alternatives to hardware keyboard is one of the most popular research areas, and means such as automatic diacritics restoration, virtual keyboard, and optical character recognition have been explored. There was also an inclination towards speech and computational morphological analysis. Resource development and knowledge representation modeling of the languages using rapid resource development and cross-lingual methods are recommended.

Revolutionary Integration of Information and Communication Technology in Nigeria's Higher Education System

Emergence and integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in the global education system has significantly enhanced intelligible teaching and learning, particularly in the developing countries. Among the developing countries, Nigeria has equally integrated ICT in its educational system. While the information driven technology has little or no integration in the lower level of education, it is intensively integrated in the higher education system. Although the Nigerian education system lacks integration of robust ICT tools to support virtual and in learning, the installed basic ICT tools such as computers, multimedia projectors, process, and internet have greatly changed the face of the country's educational administration and teaching and learning from the traditional practice. Effective and efficient use of ICT are however affected by extrinsic and intrinsic barriers. The need to strengthen the ICT framework and deployment for a more robust teaching and learning process in the country's education system is emphasized.

Increasing Teacher Educators' Access and Use of Instructional and Web-Based Technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa

While teacher educators in Sub-Saharan Africa have increased access to information and communication technology (ICT), there is a lack of empirical research that describes the detail of educators' use of technology. This chapter addresses the gap in the literature with an exploratory mixed method study in a region of Nigeria. Researchers developed a survey to collect quantitative data from 190 teacher educators and added data from 10 interviewees to verify and the survey findings. The survey assessed the types of technologies in use and the demographics of teachers who use them. As expected, use is dependent on access, and overall access was high. Demographic differences in use were not great, but women were slightly more accepting than men, and more recent graduates more accepting than older ones. Teachers overall were moderately comfortable with technology. Researchers did not collect data about enabling factors like technical support or professional development. This suggests that next steps would be to define instructional software and assess technical support needs.