12.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on learning with technologies in contexts where resources are constrained. These contexts, although most common in developing nations, are not limited to these nations. For example, the current world economic crisis and the austerity measures being placed on various northern hemisphere countries makes it difficult to confine resource-constrained to a geographical location. It would also be erroneous to assume that resource constraints exist homogeneously inside national boundaries. Southern contexts such as South Africa, India, and Brazil are cases in point, where there are extreme inequalities in access to and success in education within these countries themselves (Bozalek et al. 2007; Krauss 2013; Rohleder et al. 2008; Traxler and Ng’ambi 2012). This is also true of northern countries such as the United States and the UK, where, for example, the school one attends largely determines one’s path in education and the suburb in which one lives determines which school one has access to, thus although these countries may be considered well resourced, the resources are not evenly distributed.

In this chapter we address the following questions:

• How is learning with technology in resource-constrained environments theorized?
• What are the challenges experienced in resource-constrained environments?
• How are educators in resource-constrained environments using emerging technologies to mitigate the constraints?

The chapter is structured as follows. First, an overview of learning in resource-constrained environments is described, followed by an elaboration of what learning with technologies entails, then an overview of the theoretical perspective that we propose as useful when considering learning with technologies in resource-constrained environments. We then go on to discuss the educational challenges in resource-constrained environments and how technologies have been used in these environments for the purposes of learning. We emphasize the importance of ascertaining and using local and prior knowledge, and then proceed to look at various contemporary uses of technology including mobile devices, do-it-yourself (DIY) citizenship, OERs, MOOCs, cloud-based tools, and connected and unconnected devices. We return to our pedagogical model and elaborate on how this may be used to incorporate social and cultural capital, pedagogical goals, and technological tools in order to promote enhanced and contextually sensitive approaches to learning using the affordances of ubiquitous technology.

12.2 Learning in Resource-constrained Environments

Currently there is a global crisis, with education facing economic austerity measures. In countries such as South Africa, the education system still faces systemic challenges largely attributed to the legacy of the apartheid system even 20 years on (e.g., see Akoojee and Nkomo 2007; Bozalek and Boughey 2012; Scott 2012; Van der Berg 2007). Most schools, especially in resource-constrained environments where there is a heavy dependence on donors, have tended to become a dumping ground for obsolete equipment and mismatched expectations (Hollow, Kleine, and Poveda 2014; West and Chew 2014).

Although there is an increasing support and use of technologies to promote learning, the lack of pedagogical guidelines has resulted in most educators integrating technologies in their teaching without an explicit pedagogical rationale (Bryant et al. 2014; Njenga and Fourie 2010; Ng’ambi, Bozalek, and Gachago 2013a,b). The consequence has been that uses of technologies have not always yielded transformative learning outcomes. It was against a similar background that Gulati (2008, 8) investigated whether the use of ICTs can benefit those who are resource poor and have limited or no access to paper-based modes of distance education delivery. Although the answer seems to be an obvious “yes,” this response is not a straightforward one. In considering Gulati’s question, it is apparent from the literature that although business sectors in most locations have been quick on the uptake and continue to exploit the availability of ubiquitous technologies (Corea 2007), most educational institutions have not responded with the same impetus and commitment. In cases where at strategic institutional levels there has been enthusiasm and commitment, there has been inertia in the general uptake at practitioner level (Ng’ambi and Bozalek 2013). Another challenge facing the higher education sector is pressure from international ratings that have tended to reward research, and publications, at the expense of teaching and learning (Johnson et al. 2014).

A further challenge has been misinformation that if a school in a particular place has been successful and they have computers, then putting computers at another school in a different location will have the effect of making it just as successful. This brings us to the important distinction between access to technologies and the actual acquisition of learning and qualitative educational outcomes (Hollow, Kleine, and Poveda 2014). The UNESCO study across seven resource-constrained countries on mobile technologies for reading acknowledges that mobile devices in themselves will not necessarily promote literacy, as they describe it “[d]eriving meaning from a text is a deeply complex act that does not happen through exposure alone” (West and Chew 2014, 18). This study assessed 4000 users across seven resource-constrained countries, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe. In another large-scale study by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2012) of ICT integration into education in 38 Caribbean and South American countries, the importance of teachers' preparedness and knowledge to integrate technology into their teaching was foregrounded. This suggests a need for pedagogical knowledge for educators to teach with technologies and learners to learn with technologies.

12.3 Learning with Technologies

Learning technologies are defined in the 2014 Horizon Report to “include both tools and resources developed expressly for the education sector, as well as pathways of development that may include tools adapted from other purposes that are matched with strategies to make them useful for learning” (Johnson et al. 2014, 35). Thus learning technologies may include badges for credit, MOOCs, mobile learning, personal learning environments, etc. However, there are also many technologies not specifically designed with the purpose of learning in mind, such as cloud computing, mobile apps, social media, tablet computing, and other technologies that are now being appropriated for learning purposes. It is our contention that pedagogical considerations are paramount when considering learning with technologies, as has been pointed out by many writers in the field of educational technologies (e.g., see the discussion in Ng'ambi, Bozalek, and Gachago (2013a,b)). This is why we prefer the notion of learning with technologies rather than learning technologies. Meaningful learning requires learning tasks that take cognizance of a learner’s prior knowledge, learner’s competencies, and available technologies to the learner.

12.4 Meaningful Learning within a Triadic Zone of Proximal Development

Our view of learning with technologies in general and in resource-constrained environments in particular is one that takes cognizance of prior knowledge, including digital competencies, that learners bring with them to formal learning environments such as schools or universities. For example, a resource-rich institution located in a resource-constrained environment and which draws learners from the latter environments is likely to have learners whose pre-exposure to technologies could disadvantage their ability to fully exploit the affordances of technologies provided by the institution. It is for this reason that Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur argue that the relational context of the Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is enriched when a parent shares information about a child with a teacher, who becomes “equipped with insider knowledge and equipped with additional tools, including knowledge that enables her to better care and guide the child” (Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur 2012, 196). In this way, the initial relational distance between a teacher and a child tends to reduce by the cultural and social input from the parent. Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur (2012, 197) define cultural capital as “the knowledge of and from the educational system” shared between parents and children through family activities. However, we prefer Jenkins’ (2002) notion of embodied cultural capital, which is defined as a long-lasting disposition of the mind and body as evidenced through skills, competencies, knowledge, and self image. Our argument is that the embodied cultural capital of learners from resource-constrained environments, if exploited, could reduce the distance between a learner and meaningful learning. Pachler, Cook, and Bachmair (2010) show how cultural practices of using mobile devices in everyday out-of-school life differ from cultural practices of teaching and learning in the school environment. According to Pachler, Cook, and Bachmair (2010), structures of what they call mobile complex entangle learners. These assimilated practices that learners acquire become embodied cultural practices that could be drawn upon to reduce transactional distance between the learner and the pedagogical goal.

Although Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur use the notion of Triadic ZPD to refer to the child, teacher, and parent, we find their framework useful to explain the role of embodied cultural capital in reducing the “transactional distance” (Moore 1993, 22) between a learner and the learning tasks. Moore (1993) defines transactional distance as the psychological or communication gap that a learner needs to overcome in order to engage meaningfully in a learning process. As Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur put it: “without a home–school relationship that provides enabling conditions for the child, without a joint proleptic view, many low-income children experience material constraints that establish barriers, rather than pathways for success in schooling” (Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur 2012, 196). We rephrase this to read: “without learner-embodied cultural capital-learning goals, many learners from resource-constrained environments may experience learning challenges and not succeed in schools.”

We infer from Panofsky and Vadeboncoeur that the embodied cultural capital of learners in resource-constrained environments influences the extent to which technologies enhance teaching and learning practices. This view is supported by a study in higher education that sought to empower educators to teach with emerging technologies which reports that, in the quest to make the course meaningful and relevant to participants, the delivery of the course continued to be adapted as facilitators became aware of the participants’ teaching challenges (Ng'ambi, Bozalek, and Gachago 2013a). This study showed that the facilitators' awareness of the cultural and social capital of the participants and the resultant steps to deal with the issue helped to reduce the relative distance and enhance meaningful learning between the participants and the course facilitators.

12.5 Integrating Home and School Cultures

There is an increasing penetration of technologies in different societies in the world, and they are not only becoming increasingly easy to use (Brown 2002) but also provide avenues to learn from different information sources through subscription to news services or following people in social media, for example Twitter. Certain technologies are ubiquitous in particular communities at different times. For example, technologies that are ubiquitous in South Africa may differ from those in the United States. In Africa, a learner might have a mobile phone as the sole technology they own. It therefore stands to reason that what is ubiquitous among middle-class scholars or students may be quite different to what working-class students have access to. This uneven access to technologies suggests that learning with technologies in resource-constrained environments would be influenced by ubiquitous technologies in these contexts, learning goals, social practices of use of technologies, and the capacity to exploit the affordances of the technologies.

One of the challenges facing education systems in resource-constrained environments is that there is often a disjuncture between the culture of student lives at home and the culture of learning at school. For example, in their study of emerging technologies and practices at South African higher education institutions, Bozalek, Ng’ambi, and Gachago (2013) observed significant differences between technologies that students were using and for which they were competent users and technologies that institutions provided and used which students did not own themselves. Rather than becoming a vehicle for student success, the latter becomes a barrier to success, especially for students from a low socio-economic class whose only access to these technologies become institutional computer laboratories. Meaningful integration of learning technologies in resource-constrained environments thus needs to take cognizance of technologies students already know, what they need to know to reach their full potential, and what technologies they currently have access to and plan a pedagogy that exploits both the technologies and practices from the sociocultural context of students. In the large UNESCO study of 4000 people across seven resource-constrained countries (West and Chew 2014) on how technology can facilitate reading reported on earlier, mobile devices were identified as one tool that can provide access to books for marginalized groups such as women and children. The importance of exploiting the possibility of making books accessible to these marginalized groups becomes an important consideration in increasing literacies in resource-constrained environments. The 2013 Horizon Report for Latin American higher education found that primary and secondary education sectors in Brazil were more innovative in using emerging technologies for teaching and learning than is the case in the higher education sector. This is likely to mean that students entering higher education in these countries would be disappointed in their expectations of teaching and learning with technologies (Johnson et al. 2013).

While taking into account the embodied cultural capital of learners, technology has the potential to reduce relational distance between learner and teacher to ensure pedagogical effectiveness, and an understanding of the affordances of technologies and effectivities is required.

12.6 The Importance of Affordances and Effectivities

It is not enough to improve access to technologies without attention to how they will improve people’s lives educationally. The capabilities approach (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2011) would see a resource-rich environment as one that provides the resources to be able to achieve what people regard as valuable in terms of what they are able to be and to do, such as the acquisition of critical literacy and numeracy skills. Thus differential resources and technologies would be necessary for different individuals to achieve the acquisition of these valuable beings and doings. This would mean that the use of technologies for any particular purpose would require human agency to decide what needs to be done and the appropriateness of the technologies to mediate the realization of the set goal. Technology can be seen as a device or technique or a practice that mediates the accomplishment of a user’s intention (agency). Each technology is designed to function in a particular way to achieve a specific objective. Affordances are the action possibilities provided by technologies that allow a user to do certain things in certain ways (Bower 2008; Gibson 1977). James Paul Gee (2014) stresses the point that unless an individual can perceive the possibilities technology provides, the technology is unlikely to be used effectively. He points out that in order for the person to take advantage of the affordances or possibilities of a technology for learning in his or her environment, “effectivities” are necessary. Effectivities are “the set of capacities for action that the individual has for transforming affordances into action” (Gee 2014, 35). Traditions and cultures are important influences on how technologies are used and consequently on effectivities. For example, a person can use a mobile phone to take a photo and then post it on Instagram or Facebook or tweet it, and other users, both known and unknown to the person posting the image, see it on their mobile devices within seconds, post a comment, and/or “like” the image. This type of community engagement/interaction provides a new form of citizenship and new ways of learning that are slowly being incorporated into education, and thus this type of knowledge is an example of an effectivity.

12.7 Exploiting Local Knowledge

The “transplantation” of western models of industrialization, without considering issues of culture, traditions, skills, and needs, to resource-constrained environments can have disastrous consequences, such as the transportation of MOOCs to African countries with no consultation about local needs for education (e.g., see Barlow (2014) for a critique of MOOCs as tools of colonialism). The taken-for-granted assumption that western values are necessarily superior is a form of what Gayatri Spivak (1988) refers to as “epistemic violence,” (where western knowledges are used to subjugate local and marginalized knowledges) and is seriously problematic. Community-based knowledges contributing to improve social practices such as building temporary shelters or township shacks, or becoming a successful entrepreneur or farmer, are useful contributions to society, but not formally acknowledged as such. The use of technologies to help capture baseline knowledge about these practices would narrow the gap between knowledge that is valued in schools and universities and local day-to-day knowledges. Technology has the potential to capture progression in knowledge construction and make this into a useful educational resource, for example using mobile phones to record progression of the building of a shack and thus develop a repository of community knowledge. The higher education students enrolled in programs such as architecture could have an assignment to run a MOOC on a topic that is relevant to the community. This approach to technology-mediated teach-back models has potential for institutions to engage in socially responsible ways and contribute to finding appropriate technologies while exposing students to real-world community-based challenges. The free online course on the economics of land degradation is an example of this (see Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network 2015).

Teachers and students who are exposed to the use of computers outside school are most likely to use computers at work. For example, a study by Ogembo, Ngugi, and Pelowski (2012) on the challenges facing rural primary schools in Kenya regarding computerization showed that only 11% of the schools had one ICT-savvy teacher and that all of the teachers required further training. Furthermore, the infrastructure of the schools mitigated against the adoption of computerization: factors such as lack of electricity, lack of access to the Internet, and the lack of adequate physical space led the researchers to the conclusion that the adoption of mobile devices such as cell phones would be a better option in these circumstances. This underscores the need for participatory design approaches (Krishna and Walsham 2005), focusing on familiar technologies which are appropriate to the environments under consideration and the creation of safe spaces for both teachers and learners to play with the technologies in order to be comfortable and learn with the technology. Importantly, there should be a consciousness of how certain groups such as women and children are discouraged from using technological devices, deepening digital divides for learning with technology (United Nations Children’s Fund 2013; West and Chew 2014). These tendencies, unless guarded against, have the danger to focus on equity and social inclusion in educational endeavors.

In the famous “hole in the wall” project, Sugata Mitra investigated the extent to which poor children with no prior exposure to a computer and without a teacher taught themselves how to use a technology (Mitra 2003, 2012). This project is an example of how children in resource-constrained environments are potentially capable of learning with technology if given opportunities. The lesson from this that it is important to be sensitive to learners’ prior knowledge and cultural capital, and that marginalization of prior knowledge is a recipe for failed interventions.

12.8 DIY Citizenship and the Maker Movement

A major challenge facing the education sector is the lack of participatory parity, that is, the ability to participate on an equal footing with one's peers (Fraser 2009), which is evidenced through unequal balance in both access to knowledge and in knowledge production (Bozalek et al. 2007). Most knowledge produced in resource-constrained environments has not been well documented and tends to be marginalized. The consequence is a homogenous knowledge production. Though desirable, it is difficult and time-consuming to create heterogeneous knowledge production spaces and while the affordances of emerging technologies provide ways of accomplishing this, including maintaining a record of digital expressions, realizing these outcomes is a difficult process.

The DIY or maker movement is becoming more prominent in education (Ratto and Boler 2014; Sharples et al. 2013). DIY encourages citizens or learners to participate in making new things through collaboration and innovation. However, while the underlying motivations upon which this movement is based are commendable, it seems largely to have been initiated in northern contexts or in situations where there are assumptions about digital access and competence, with some exceptions (e.g., see the citizen journalism project in a marginalized South African community in Bozalek, Ng'ambi, and Gachago (2013)). The notions of “digital citizenship” and “active citizenship” could have important empowering effects for marginalized communities across north and south contexts, as Castells (2012) has shown in his work on social movements using mobile devices. In resource-constrained environments both private and public educational institutions will need to explore how these new forms of social movements can be translated into educational outcomes in creating knowledge-sharing environments to cultivate a culture of active digital citizens.

In the context of a Triadic ZPD, active citizenship adds a layer of complexity, especially when dealing with multiple online identities for both students and teachers. It is an increasing challenge to teach learners with multiple identities and for educators to engage with social scholarship using social media themselves (Greenhow and Gleason 2014). To meet diverse learning goals dictated by multiple identities there are implications on how we teach because learners are continuously searching to satisfy their different “lives.” For these learners, DIY, maker movement projects, and MOOCs might be an attractive option in the pursuit of fun, excitement, and diversity of learning goals.

12.9 Insensitivity to Prior Knowledge

While authors such as Barlow (2014) and Moens et al. (2010) attribute the failure of ICT projects in resource-constrained environments to insensitivity to local contexts, we argue that in addition to this, failure of learning with technologies is also due to insensitivity to the prior knowledges of learners. For example, in resource-constrained environments it is not unusual for some first-year students to use a computer for the first time. However, these students, who are generally competent users of the mobile phones, can use social networking software but not have had opportunities to use it on a computer. The problem arises when such competencies are not recognized or exploited. It is therefore no surprise that such students may be perceived to be underprepared because their prior competencies appear not valued. These assumptions, such as ICTs being singly associated with computers, require critical engagement. At most institutions in resource-constrained environments, the majority of students access the Internet from computer laboratories provided and maintained by the institutions, which are often booked out and not available for all students to use (Rohleder et al. 2008). If mobile devices which students have access to were used instead, this would lead to more equity epistemological access for students to learn.

While the mobile penetration in resource-constrained environments is hailed as a success story, the uses of mobile devices have been limited to social interaction and not as tools for active citizenship or pedagogy (Ally and Tsinakos 2014). One of the mediating tools in a Triadic ZPD in resource-constrained environments is mobile phones/devices. In these environments, mobile learning is therefore is arguably a logical option.

There are four trends in learning with technologies in resource-constrained environments: mobile learning, OERs, MOOCs, and cloud-based tools.

12.10 Mobile Learning: An Ignored Obvious Choice

As of May 2014, there were nearly 7 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, which is equivalent to 95.5% of the world population. The mobile penetration in developed countries is 120.8%, which effectively means at least one mobile subscription per person. In the developing world the mobile penetration at the time of writing this chapter is 90.2%. Africa has the lowest mobile penetration worldwide at 69.3% (MobiThinking 2014). However, mobile phones are ubiquitous technologies in resource-constrained environments and have the highest penetration rate of any technology in history but remain one of the unexplored devices for educational purposes. Minges (2012) observes that in developing countries access to mobile communication is high and continues to rise, and that the potential for mobile phones is unquestionable. However, it is difficult to keep track of the actual uses of mobile phones as Bell (2008) rightly observes: the potential uses of digital devices are multiplying, for example a mobile phone becomes a camera, an internet connection, a TV, a GPS device, a games console, and so on. For this reason, Bell poses a fundamental question: how do we handle the ways that devices are talked about, written about, thought about, and how do certain discourses take hold and help to shape technologies and uses?

In order to make the most of the affordances of mobile learning, Siff (2006, 7) postulates an institutional mobile technology strategy aiming at improving student retention, creating community, leveraging resources, providing high-quality teaching, learning and research, and playing a positive role regionally. Higher education institutions (HEIs) in resource-constrained environments may have to consider exploiting the success of cellular technology for teaching and learning, and would need to engage with pedagogical considerations when using mobile learning (Park 2014).

Despite mobile phones mediating communication and strengthening or weakening social networks among members, they also fundamentally change the way social networks function (Aker and Mbiti 2010; Castells 2012). Aker and Mbiti stress the need to understand the effects of mobile phones on these networks.

In most resource-constrained environments, the diffusion of cellular (mobile) phones has been remarkable. However, although mobile phones are widely used, there is still an acute gender gap in mobile phone ownership, with women less likely to own a mobile phone than a man and less likely to have a smartphone, as noted in the UNESCO study on the focus of educational potential of mobile technologies for reading using mobile devices (West and Chew 2014). However, in a benchmarking and monitoring study on 38 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean on integration of and access to ICTs in education, gender was not found to be a significant exclusion factor, with girls gaining access to ICTs in education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2012).

The rapid growth of mobile learning activity across Africa has ranged from a replication of experiences and challenges elsewhere, to responding to specific challenges of social infrastructure or specifics of local culture, to representing localized versions of global challenges to working with social entrepreneurs which support indigenous languages, traditional pedagogy, and informal knowledge (Traxler and Ng’ambi 2012). For example, the CSIR’s Meraka Institute in South Africa developed an online math tutoring service, Dr Math, to support secondary school learners with Mathematics (Botha and Butgereit 2012). At the University of Cape Town, the Dynamic Frequently Asked Questions (DFAQ) (Ng’ambi 2005) was used to exploit students’ communicative competence with short message service (SMS) hence empowered underprepared and marginalized students to anonymously post questions. Other examples include the use of social media for social construction of knowledge (Rambe 2012). As of 2014, Edmodo (https://www.edmodo.com/) is one the fastest growing mobile learning management systems in education in resource-constrained environments. The Obami (http://www.obami.com/) social learning platform is becoming popular in South Africa and other parts of Africa. Edmodo has been used in a postgraduate program in educational technology and in a pre-service teachers’ course in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town.

Although these examples were designed and implemented in resource-constrained environments, they are built around a universal learning design that sees the need for changing the learning environment to adapt to the learner and not vice versa (Burgstahler 2010; Leibowitz and Bozalek 2015). Since no learning design fits all, the appropriateness of learning technologies for the most constrained and marginalized contexts needs to be taken as the norm. These ideas will be useful not only to these contexts, but will provide accessibility and enhancement of learning in other contexts too. For example, the DFAQ tool designed to empower silenced and marginalized voices in South Africa (Ng’ambi 2005) has been integrated in the Sakai Learning Management System as a question and answer tool for all to use at the HEI in which it was developed. Universal learning design principles are also assumed in the conceptualization of OERs as these resources are meant to be customizable, remixed, and re-purposed for different pedagogical contexts but their uptake has been constrained by social practices.

12.11 Open Educational Resources

Although OERs are increasingly discussed in higher education globally and gaining popularity in Africa, Ngimwa and Wilson (2012) lament that institutional cultures and lack of policies are hindering wide adoption of OERs. For example, institutions continue to reward academics for publishing in accredited journals and hence discouraging publication in open-access journals. However, policies are slowly beginning to change. Ng’ambi and Luo (2013) report that the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology have developed institutional policies to guide the creation and use of OERs, and methods of equating OERs output to research publication. A study on researchers’ attitudes towards freely and openly sharing and disseminating agricultural research output conducted in 2011 revealed that institutional requirements and policies influenced researchers’ choices on whether or not to share openly. This is consistent with the influence of cultural capital in a Triadic ZPD.

Diallo, Thuo, and Wright (2013) report that at the African Virtual University (AVU) OER-related activities are embedded in the AVU policies. Thus, the formulation of OER policies is critical in nurturing an institutional culture that both students and staff can draw on in their actions. Sometimes, it is exposure to resources or awareness of the affordances of the technologies that facilitates learning with technologies. For example, across Africa there are OER repositories at the disposal of educators (see Table 12.1). These resources are available to both teachers and learners, but availability does not necessarily mean being used. However, educators have opportunities to use these resources to enrich their teaching practice and learners can access the resources to enhance their learning experiences.

While the merits of OERs are not in question, Ng’ambi and Luo (2013) question the sustainability of OERs, particularly at institutions where social behavior and social practices appear opposed to the culture of sharing, as well as there being a lack of knowledge to use them. In a recent study, Mtebe and Raisamo (2014) report that a lack of access to computers and the Internet, as well as low bandwidth, absence of policies, and lack of skills to create and use OERs, were the main barriers to using them in 11 HEIs in Tanzania. In a South African study on the use of OERs across 17 HEIs Lesko (2013) found that it was mainly a lack of knowledge related to OERs and their usage and infrastructural challenges which were the main challenges.

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2012) study in Latin America and the Caribbean found that 24% of the 38 countries indicated that they had policies on OERs.

Another related phenomenon facing the challenges of institutional cultures, norms, and debates is MOOCs.

12.12 Massive Open Online Courses

MOOCs are open-access informal online courses but when aligned to a formal course they may also provide an opportunity for independent learning without the constraints of class size (Sharples et al. 2013). There is an increase in popularity of MOOCs in higher education (Baggeley 2013). The premise of MOOCs is widening access to education at no cost to the learner initially, but to get the credit for the course, and to get textbooks, there may be some costs to the learner. The consequence of a changing business model and the availability of platforms for online courses has led to institutions with resources, particularly elite institutions in the United States, to widen their influence by offering MOOCs and thereby disrupting the traditional approaches to teaching and learning (e.g., see Lewin (2013) reporting about new configurations of MOOCs run by elite US institutions in 40 countries across the world). Some examples of MOOCs are Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) and Edx (https://www.edx.org/). EdX is a brainchild of Harvard and MIT that was created to openly and freely offer higher education courses in the form of MOOCs to students around the world.

Aguaded-Gómez (2013) cautions that MOOCs risk becoming like a fast-food outlet, “McDonaldized” or commodified and imbued with a westernized bias of training and culture, and hence calls for socio-culturally sensitive MOOCs. Viewed through the lens of Triadic ZPD, some MOOCs may foster cultural imperialism as the principles governing these MOOCs could be inconsistent with the cultural and social capital of learners and educational institutions in resource-constrained environments, as Barlow (2014) has noted. Where there are limited resources to support teaching and learning for registered students, it would be an unnecessary extravagance for an institution to invest in running a MOOC. It is therefore no wonder that currently MOOCs are offered by well-resourced elitist institutions and as long as the cost of broadband remains high, the motivation to produce MOOCs in resource-constrained environment will remain a pipe dream.

Although the weaknesses of MOOCs have been identified as “access, content, quality of learning, accreditation, pedagogy, poor engagement of weaker learners, exclusion of learners without specific networking skills” (BIS 2013, 4), it is possible that in resource-constrained environments MOOCs could be used for socially good purposes. For example, if properly planned and resourced, MOOCs could be used to promote better pedagogical practice to those who are working at the coal-face of education, such as teachers in schools needing to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Thus MOOCs could be used to address issues on both a global and a local level by addressing common needs, and allowing for participation and networking across geographical contexts. They would, however, have to address context-specific learning needs and it should be remembered that internet access is required to attend a MOOC, and this is not commonly available in resource-constrained environments.

12.13 Educators Shift to Cloud-based Tools

While an increasing number of African universities use LMSs or VLEs, only a fraction of the features of these systems are used. In a postgraduate program that drew on students from South Africa, Congo DRC, Botswana, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Kenya, Ng’ambi (2011) posted reading materials and assignments on the LMS and observed that some students had intermittent access to the Internet, and when they had access, the low bandwidth limited use of the LMS. The lack of interest as a factor is also reported in Bozalek, Ng’ambi, and Gachago’s (2013) study, which found that lecturers’ personal interests and passions were the primary motivation for using emerging technologies for teaching. Peluso (2012, 126) cautions, in defense of educators, that “Not every teacher has the opportunity or background to know how to incorporate technology into their classroom, yet many attempt to do so without having a clear understanding of the implications for learning.” In a study that sought to model effective ways of teaching with emerging technologies, Ng’ambi, Bozalek, and Gachago (2013b) show how shifting the focus from LMSs to cloud-based tools motivated educators because these tools had both social and academic uses thereby providing educators many pedagogical options. Educators are likely to use technologies they are aware of and have most access to, and instant messaging, social media, and social networking are used often presumably because of low bandwidth and accessibility on most mobile phones (Bozalek, Ng'ambi, and Gachago 2013).

One of the advantages of cloud-based tools is that they are not controlled or regulated by institutions. When these tools are augmented with mobile devices/phones which students do not only own but are competent users of, useful learning opportunities are created regardless of whether students are attending contact or distance education.

12.14 Learning through Connected Devices 24/7

There is an increasing blurring between notions of “distance” and “contact” education, as many traditional distance education institutions are using technologies to increase contact with students, and traditional “contact” institutions are accepting too many students to provide any meaningful one-on-one contact (Woo et al. 2008). With the use of technologies, students enrolled in traditional distance learning courses may have more contact time with resources, tutors, and support staff than even those at contact institutions. As a consequence, technologies used to support distance students are being appropriated for large classes at traditionally contact institutions. Both distance and contact institutions realize the need to reduce the distance between a student and instructors. In resource-constrained environments, where students not only own mobile phones but are also connected 24/7, the use of mobile devices as learning technologies is a logical option. Park (2014), in his discussion on good pedagogy with m-learning, proposes four characteristics:

1. A great deal of communication and interaction between learners and teachers.
2. The learners are involved in collaborative projects where they can learn from each other.
3. Learning materials or rules of activity are delivered through mobile devices.
4. The transactions take place mainly between learners and the teacher is minimally involved in facilitating group activities.

One of the advantages of using connected devices (i.e., connected through a mobile service provider or a wireless hotspot) is that it enables real-time engagement with resources, peers, and teachers. However, there are non-connected devices that are also useful depending on the design of learning tasks, such as using podcasts as supplementary resources.

12.15 Pedagogical Choices for Teaching with Technology

The decisions that inform pedagogical choices are usually premised on three perspectives: associative, cognitive, and situative (Mayes and De Freitas 2004). The associative perspective is task focused, objective driven, and describes learning as a set of competencies. The cognitive perspective aims at helping to acquire skills on how to learn and is aimed at developing autonomous learners. The situated perspective focuses on exploiting learning relationships with peers to engage in authentic practices to solve realistic problems. It can be inferred from these three perspectives that pedagogical uses of emerging technologies tend to focus on what happens in the classroom while being mindful of environmentally imposed constraints. These perspectives impact pedagogy, as Mayes and De Freitas (2004, 13–14) elaborate:

The associative view emphasizes:

• routines of organized activity
• clear goals and feedback
• individualized pathways and routines matched to the individual’s prior performance.

The cognitive view emphasizes:

• interactive environments for construction of understanding
• teaching and learning activities that encourage experimentation and the discovery of broad principles
• support for reflection.

The situative view emphasizes:

• environments of participation in social practices of enquiry and learning
• support for development of identities as capable and confident learners
• dialogue that facilitates the development of learning relationships.

The above perspectives provide a way of making the assumptions that underpin the teaching strategies explicit. These assumptions are then mapped to the affordances of technologies, for example cloud-based tools.

We have already sensitized the reader to the reality that most curricula are designed in insensitive ways that accommodate the learning needs of already privileged learners whose out-of-school knowledge is closely related to what is valued as useful knowledge. Furthermore, the knowledge of learners who grow up in communities which differ from what is regarded as the norm, that is, who are not white, male, middle class, western, heterosexual, able-bodied, etc., is neither validated nor is it closely aligned with school or university knowledge. This challenge typically describes the situation most prevalent in resource-constrained environments. These learners are subjected to the same curricula, taught in the same way, and assessed in the same way that their privileged peers are. It is clear that learners whose out-of-school exposure is closely aligned with the school knowledge more are likely to succeed under these circumstances. In order to address this challenge, in this chapter we have proposed the Triadic ZPD framework (see Figure 12.1) as it provides a way of appropriating the learning with technologies that take cognizance of learners’ prior knowledge and competencies with ubiquitous technologies in the design of learning tasks. This is particularly significant in that in growing up in various cultural milieus in resource-constrained environments predisposes learners to certain knowledges, including technologies ubiquitous in those environments. It follows that prior knowledge could inform choice of examples, and existing competencies with ubiquitous technologies may remove the learning barriers that arise from practices such as unfamiliar examples used in a task, use of technologies that learners only access at school and which are inaccessible outside school hours, and learning outcomes that learners see as having no relevance to their own world views.

In proposing this framework, we seek to provide different and innovative ways of mediating formal education through the affordances of learning technologies so that education becomes meaningful and relevant for all learners. It is thus important to find ways in which formal education can be expanded to appropriate local subjugated knowledges. This calls for new ways of thinking about curriculum design and for more participatory forms of learning, where there can be a cross-pollination of ideas between learners themselves and between educators and learners. Table 12.2 gives examples of how pedagogical choices inform the choice of tools within the Triadic ZPD framework.

Some of the examples of pedagogical goals and associated learning technologies within a Triadic ZPD are presented to show how learning technologies can be theorized and applied in resource-constrained environments. Although educators who are using learning technologies in this theorized way are in the minority, much work still needs to be engaged in to ensure that technologies are used to transform teaching and learning practices.

12.16 Conclusion

Most schools and HEIs in resource-constrained contexts continue to operate within a culture of competitive individualistic learning, which tends focus largely on middle-class interests. This unfortunately makes it difficult for them to accommodate emerging forms of engagement, such as socially constructed knowledge production, open-collaborative learning, and MOOCs, which are seen as disruptive of the status quo. Furthermore, institutions of learning are generally hierarchical in nature and thus slow to change and to learn. Opportunities for transformation of practices tend therefore to lag behind, relying on traditional learning practices rather than ubiquitous or innovative ones which are used outside the classroom by scholars and students. With the rise of MOOCs from resource-rich institutions and new business models incorporating players outside the formal education sector, institutions in resource-constrained environments may not be aware that they have been usurped and could potentially become redundant or bypassed.

As we conclude this chapter, we review the research questions that this chapter sought to address:

• How is learning with technology in resource-constrained environments theorized?

The use of the Triadic ZPD framework provides a way of understanding the need to take cognizance of learners’ prior learning with the technologies available to them and of which they are often competent users. The underlying argument is that effective and meaningful learning requires that the affordances of the task match the affordances of tools which are readily available and accessible to learners (what we have referred to as “effectivities”). Thus, the focus of the learning activity should be on realization of learning outcomes and the barriers of technologies should not be a hindrance to the learning process. The cultural knowledge in the Triadic ZPD also suggests that examples and illustrations used in the learning activity need to align with what is familiar to learners as this reduces the transactional distance.

• What are the challenges experienced in resource-constrained environments?

Ignoring the culture, skills, and needs of resource-constrained environments and imposing western, white, middle-class values and ideas can have disastrous consequences, such as the transportation of MOOCs to African countries with no consultation about local needs for education. The general challenges of teaching with technologies in resource-constrained environments can be described as failure to take cognizance of the cultural and social capital that learners bring with them to formal learning environments. Thus, the problem is that of insensitivity to prior knowledge, familiar technologies, and competencies of learners. It is important to take cognizance of the pitfalls of the cultural and social capital of the schooling system being imposed on learners at the expense of local knowledge, a concern which has been highlighted across this chapter.

• How are educators in resource-constrained environments using emerging technologies to mitigate the constraints?

In this chapter we have outlined a number of technologies which have been used in resource-constrained environments in both beneficial and problematic ways. We have discussed the DIY/maker movement, mobile learning, OERs, MOOCs, cloud-based tools, and learning with connected and unconnected devices. We have provided examples in the chapter of educators who are mitigating constraints through focusing on pedagogical goals rather than using emerging technologies without any pedagogical intent. The choice of pedagogical tools is an outcome of an affordance analysis that takes into account the embodied cultural capital and matches the affordances of a task with that of the tools.

Finally, as Baijnath (2013) reminds us, access to technologies in resource-constrained environments is a matter of social justice. Whether we will be able to include those who hitherto have been excluded from learning with technologies, and use their knowledges and voices, will determine how rich and socially just education will be in the future. Whether or not the affordances of these technologies can be harnessed to achieve valuable beings and doings is also a crucial factor in promoting socially just pedagogies in resource-constrained environments. Our final word to educators is that what is not recognized in learners is not appreciated, and what is not appreciated is not celebrated, and what is not celebrated is sooner or later lost in life.

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