There exists a significant knowledge gap in the scientific literature concerning the effective design of remote focus groups, particularly with regard to facilitating interactive engagement among participants. This paper aims to address this gap by presenting a hands-on guide for designing online or remote focus groups, emphasizing approaches to enhance interaction. Our guide is informed by prior works and our recent empirical experiences in conducting remote focus groups. We offer this guide as a resource for researchers, students, and practitioners seeking to conduct remote focus groups and facilitate interactions.

Imaging and assessing mobile technology for development (M4D) means understanding the use of appropriate technologies and services, and how they directly or indirectly address socio-economic challenges. This book adopts various perspectives to identify the obstacles to affordable digital technologies in order to enable, enhance, and effect development. 

The book plays on the tension between success reports and optimistic projections, on one hand, and empirical evidence of technological belly splash, on the other hand. The areas covered include infusion of service education in computing education, the Rwandan establishment of African Centres of Excellence to promote the development of appropriate technology, the metaverse’s realisation in a mobile network-enabled “metaversity”, and difficulties detected when evaluating digitisation of distance learning, students’ security awareness, dissemination of agricultural information, and mobile payment. The decolonisation of community-based media and attempts to step outside the mobile network and Internet are also covered.

First-year engineering students show difficulties in connecting basic vector algebra with manipulations using the graphical representation. Experiencing vectors in real applications can improve the process of learning vectors. Thus, we introduce a unique approach for using digital technologies, namely augmented reality. We utilized a video see-through head-mounted display to develop a vector manipulation tool enabling users to select and place virtual vectors in the real environment. The aim was to see how students react when experiencing vectors in augmented reality. After using the prototype, students answered a questionnaire about this experience. Results show that students experiences are positive and they are motivated to use the prototype in the course. Further, we investigated opinions about vector concepts from students in the trial group and other students attending the same course in vector algebra. The results indicate some differences in what students spontaneously associate with the concept vectors. Moreover, this study provides insights into how such investigations can be elaborated in the future.

Kapitlet är baserat på erfarenheter från ett pågående samarbete mellan ämnena informatik och matematik vid Karlstads universitet, vilket har sitt ursprung i en UPE-konferens år 2022. I detta samarbete försöker vi utveckla tekniska hjälpmedel för matematikundervisning bland grundkursstudenter. Här finns två nyckelfaktorer. Dels involverandet av mastersstudenter i interdisciplinära projekt, dels utnyttjande av virtualiseringstekniker – virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality – för interaktiva visualiseringar där även abstrakta begrepp blir påtagliga genom att de blir manipulerbara. Två försöksomgångar med ingenjörsstudenter under ett moment i linjär algebra visar hur virtualiseringstekniker på olika sätt kan bidra till motivation vid inlärning av abstrakta begrepp. Det exemplifierar också hur IT-studenter kan få nya infallsvinklar på sitt eget ämne genom att delta i interdisciplinära pedagogiska experiment.

This book provides extended frameworks and models to help with the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries. The book first discusses the extent to which conventional ICT theories can be rigid in nature, often unable to handle the constant advances in technology, and technology adoption, implementation, usage, and disposal, not to mention different needs and cost availability in developing countries. The authors go on to show how new and revised models, tested in many societies in developing countries, can solve this mismatch. The authors provide examples of successful ICT adoption in developing country settings, in the areas of agriculture, culture, forestry, education, economics, health, and governance. The authors also show how techniques from persuasive design, philosophical designs, and motivational designs have been adjusted to facilitate successful ICT adoption, implementation, usage, and disposal in targeted regions.

This book provides extended frameworks and models to help with the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries. The book first discusses the extent to which conventional ICT theories can be rigid in nature, often unable to handle the constant advances in technology, and technology adoption, implementation, usage, and disposal, not to mention different needs and cost availability in developing countries. The authors go on to show how new and revised models, tested in many societies in developing countries, can solve this mismatch. The authors provide examples of successful ICT adoption in developing country settings, in the areas of agriculture, culture, forestry, education, economics, health, and governance. The authors also show how techniques from persuasive design, philosophical designs, and motivational designs have been adjusted to facilitate successful ICT adoption, implementation, usage, and disposal in targeted regions.

Several researchers and contingency agencies have suggested good practices for crisis management exercises. Resource-constrained practitioners in the field report difficulties finding cost-efficient ways to maintain exercise cycles. This paper draws on experiences from working with professional crisis response coordinators who adapted material for table-top exercises to learning management systems, executed the exercises and evaluated team performance. This paper discusses the elimination of bottlenecks and unexpected benefits arising from more flexible exercise designs in terms of synchrony, continuity, and location. While these concepts capture the essence of the various opportunities for flexibility, they need some supporting features in the design of digital exercises. This paper argues for putting emphasis on the writing/speech dichotomy when analysing exercise designs from the perspective of the entire exercise life cycle, including evaluations and preparations for further exercises. Additionally, how requests for individual answers are planned appears to be an effective instrument for efficient exercise design and evaluation during the conducting of an exercise.

This case study describes a usability testing course in which students learn by practicing several evaluation methods. The on-campus format makes it possible for teachers and students to meet to discuss recorded test sessions and students can observe other students’ execution of pilot studies conducted on campus. The COVID-19 pandemic placed new demands on this course. In-person activities were avoided by some students and many test participants. Some student teams tried remote usability testing. Interestingly, screen recordings (with sound) of the test sessions show that remote testing sometimes helped the students focus more on observation and less on (inappropriately) guiding the test subjects. Another effect was that the students found it easier to recruit participants than during the previous years when the university was teeming with students, lecturers, and non-academic staff. However, the recruited participants were often notably limited to the students’ circles of friends.