Posts by Michelle Fellows
Michelle Fellows
Michelle is a Research Assistant with the Global Impact Study and a graduate student at the University of Washington. She is working toward concurrent masters degrees in Public Administration and Library and Information Science. Michelle worked in a law library prior to joining CIS. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, she studied geography with a focus in development and spent a year in Durban, South Africa.
Do computer games and chat build useful skills?
The Non-instrumental Use of ICT as a Component of General ICT Skill Acquisition Study will explore the benefits library and telecenter users gain from playing computer games, sending email, and chatting. These types of uses — known as "non-instrumental" — are often ignored in studies on public access to ICT. But we suspect that they can help people develop the comfort, skills, and expertise they need to improve their social and economic situations, particularly in the areas of employment and education.
Continue reading...Benefits of sharing — when public access is the best access
September 23, 2009
Sharing a computer in a telecenter, cybercafé, or library is the only option for some people — often because they lack the income, skills, or infrastructure at home. But sometimes people prefer sharing computers in public-access venues. The Collaborative Knowledge Sharing Study examines the reasons why. Researchers will visit a dozen public access venues in Ghana — large and small, rural and urban, upscale and relatively modest — to identify when sharing enhances or diminishes a user’s experience as compared to individual or private use.
Continue reading...Infomediaries: Public access brokers
September 23, 2009
What is the role of a librarian, cybercafé manager, or telecenter employee? How do people working in public-access venues such as these act as infomediaries — influencing which services people learn, use, and value? The Infomediaries: Brokers of Public Access Study will examine how infomediaries bring people and ICT together, both as service providers (offering advice, training, and content) and mediators (empowering individuals for whom services would otherwise appear unfathomable).
Continue reading...Phase one findings from Bangladesh, Chile & Lithuania
August 18, 2009
The Global Impact Study has wrapped up its first phase, which included a year of exploratory fieldwork in three pilot countries — Bangladesh, Chile, and Lithuania. Country Research Teams collected data on several public access venues, looking at user groups and activities, venue characteristics, and the roles venues play in each community. This data provides a snapshot of regional information ecologies — community networks of trusted information sources — and will be used to refine our research design.
Continue reading...Compendium of ICTD project impact assessments
March 12, 2009
The Compendium on Impact Assessment of ICT-for-Development Projects, by Richard Heeks and Alemayehu Molla, is a valuable guide for researchers. The compendium reviews impact assessment methods and approaches, and includes detailed descriptions of eleven different frameworks.
Continue reading...
- computer repair: I'm always looking for things about information th...
- Emeline Gudmundsson: Fantastic posting, I favorited your blog post so I...
- Alan Foo: Perhaps your study should include how we are appro...
- Arogundade Oluwasefunmi: I am really fascinated with your vision and the vi...
- Erskine: I agree that people are more likely to use compute...
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September 23, 2009
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