What is Research in ICTD

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What is Research in ICTD?
Panelists -

• Kentaro Toyama
• Assistant Managing Director
• Microsoft Research

• Jenna Burrell
• Assistant Professor
• UC Berkeley
• School of Information

Moderator - Melissa Ho PhD Student, UC Berkeley
School of Information
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One Fateful Day
As with any field of study, what work constitutes
the field, and how quality is judged, remain open
questions. The field, of course, is still
evolving and its standards will be determined by
the community as a whole. What makes ICTD
research research, and not just reports about
technology projects in rural villages? What does
it mean to have economics and anthropology
research side by side with computer science and
electronic engineering? How can we preserve the
integrity of methodologies developed by
individual disciplines, while allowing for
cross-fertilization among fields and a healthy
respect for other disciplinary perspectives?
Kentaro Toyama, On Writing ICTD Research
Papers September 3, 2008
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The Kentaro Recap
Research in General
Specifically ICTD
Novelty
Relevance to ICTD
Generalizability
Research Multi-disciplinarity
Applicability
Audience Multi-disciplinarity
Rigor, verifiability, replicability
Empiricism
Thick Description
Accuracy
Other Key Elements
0 Hype
Negative Results
Related Work
Surprise Results
Diversity
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So What is Research in ICTD?
Evaluation Kuriyan, Bussell, Pal
New Technologies Multimouse, WiLD, CAM
Technology in Situ Burrell, Horst, Bell, Jensen