Abstract

Evaluating information and communication technology (ICT) projects for education (ICT4E) in development context is essential to understand if ICT implementation has been effective in improving educational performance in the developing world and ensuring the sustainability of the efforts. Detecting the current lack of an internationally agreed evaluation criteria for ICT4E in development context, this study formulated the ―ICT4E Evaluation Framework‖ by conducting structured literature review and category analysis of twenty journal articles that had ICT4E evaluation as the primary subject matter and were mostly published in one of the top ranked journals in ―ICT4D Journal Impact Ranking Table‖ between 2000 and 2013. The Framework consolidates what have been argued by the research community as the key factors to be included under ICT4E evaluation. The study further seeks to answer the research question if the current lack of the evaluation criteria has generated a discrepancy between how the research community view ICT4E evaluation and how the government practitioners conduct the evaluation. By comparing the contents of Korea International Cooperation Agency(KOICA)‘s evaluation report with the elements of the proposed Framework as a case study, this work argues that there is a noticeable gap between the two parties‘ considerations. This study suggests that the gap possibly originated from differences in perspectives—the researchers more emphasizing on assessing how ICT was utilized to meet educational objectives, whereas KOICA more focusing on analyzing ICT4E projects as a development practice. This study evokes the necessity of understanding the differences in considerations towards in ICT4E evaluation and suggests that future attempts to build a set of internationally agreed criteria should begin with the efforts to reconcile such discrepancies in viewpoints.

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