It is increasingly in vogue to describe research as community-engaged, but the incentives of academia often misalign with the needs of communities that academics purport to serve. This leads to abusive and exploitative work under the guise of engagement. To address this probem involves more than well-meaninged researchers, but to address the distorted incentive structure of academia at multiple levels.
Action-oriented researchers aim to design and evaluate how technology can be used to improve the lives of underserved populations around the globe. However, improvement is a value-laden concept with normative, causal, and methodological assumptions. As researchers, we should examine how different perspectives on improvement influence the choices made in the design of action.
Their results were surprising. With all the hype around Internet messaging services like WhatsApp, the researchers were expecting WhatsApp to well outdo old-school SMS text messages. Yet, SMS beat WhatsApp for mobile phone test prep!
Anthony Poon, a Cornell Ph.D. student studying information science, is working on test preparation technology initiatives to improve high school graduation rates in Cameroon.
Testing interventions that can support Cameroonian youth as they transition from school to work.
Designing a distributed infrastructure to provide users with public transportation information in Kyrgyzstan.