The Global Impact Study

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.

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Do computer games and chat build useful skills?

September 23, 2009

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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.

Benefits of sharing — when public access is the best access

September 23, 2009

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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.

Infomediaries: Public access brokers

September 23, 2009

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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).

Phase one findings from Bangladesh, Chile & Lithuania

August 18, 2009

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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.

Compendium of ICTD project impact assessments

March 12, 2009

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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.

Michelle Fellows

Do computer games and chat build useful skills?

Benefits of sharing — when public access is the best access

Infomediaries: Public access brokers

Phase one findings from Bangladesh, Chile & Lithuania

Compendium of ICTD project impact assessments

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