Evaluating ICT for Education in Africa - Royal Holloway, University of ...

„The higher the perceived profile of the visitors, the moredifficult it becomes to genuinely observe what is happening …It was a lot easier to get a sense of what happened on a dayto-daybasis when I was just perceived as a „student‟ and noone cared about impressing me … Now, because of theassociations, it is much more tricky.‟6.4.5 MethodsExploring innovative methodological approaches to monitoring andevaluation of ICT for education initiatives was a central objective of theresearch, and this was both facilitated and constrained by operating inpartnership. The target audience for the outputs, combined with thesignificant financial consequences of deviating too far from the anticipatedformat of a conventional evaluation, meant that it was necessary to providethe partner with established research methods to complement the moreinnovative approaches. Understanding that the partner required a certainformat of evaluation that fitted within their criteria of impact in order for it tobe useful for their purposes provided a valuable lesson (Morgan 2004).Within this negotiated position there remained a vital and regularly utilisedrole within the partnership for the academic in promoting innovation and athorough research approach that would ultimately serve to enhancecredibility through rigorous engagement.The necessity of this engagement was demonstrated through discussionbetween partners surrounding the suitability of questions within themonitoring and evaluation interviews and focus groups. On several occasionsit was necessary to alter proposed questions because they were deemed toopolitically contentious by public sector partners. This was particularlyapparent when investigating the value of laptops in Ethiopia, where theresearch team was prevented from asking two questions that were consideredtoo explicit. The first of these was „is the laptop the most appropriate use ofmoney?‟ And the second was „if you had the choice to spend this amount ofmoney on anything for your school, would you spend it on laptops?‟242