Technography and design–actuality gap-analysis of internet computer technologies-assisted education: Western expectations and global education

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a design–actuality gap-analysis of the internet infrastructure that exists in developing nations and nations in the global South with the deployed internet computer technologies (ICT)-assisted programs that are designed to use internet infrastructure to provide educational opportunities. Programs that specifically pinpoint females’ access to schooling are foregrounded in this paper. For our research, we aggregated data on internet infrastructure and data on where ICT-assisted educational endeavors were being deployed in order to create a technography – a series of maps – that would illustrate where there is internet infrastructure that might support ICT-assisted educational programs, where ICT-assisted educational programs are being deployed, and where there is a design–actuality gap. Our research highlights two types of design–actuality gaps: there are places where there is access to internet infrastructure, but very little access to ICT-assisted educational programs; and there are also places where ICT-assisted educational programs have been deployed, but there is very little access to the kind of internet infrastructure that is necessary to support these programs.