The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC)

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/19251

The African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC) is an academic journal published by the LINK Centre, School of Literature, Language and Media (SLLM), Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), AJIC is an interdisciplinary, open access journal concerned with Africa’s participation in the information society and digital network economy. The journal does not impose author processing charges. AJIC's predecessor, The Southern African Journal of Information and Communication (SAJIC), was published from 2000 to 2008, before becoming AJIC in 2010.

Corresponding Editor: Lucienne Abrahams. AJIC Submissions

ISSN: 2077-7213 (online version)

ISSN: 2077-7205 (print version)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23962/10539/19251

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Author: search.filters.author.Renaud, KarenHas files: Yes

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    Reviewing a Decade of Human–Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D) Research, as One of Best’s “Grand Challenges”
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2021-05-31) Van Biljon, Judy; Renaud, Karen
    The human–computer interaction for development (HCI4D) field emerged at the intersection of the fields of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) and human–computer interaction (HCI). In 2010, Michael Best nominated HCI4D as one of ICT4D’s “grand challenges”. This HCI4D field is now entering its second decade, and it is important to reflect on the research that has been conducted, and to consider how HCI4D researchers have addressed the challenge that constitutes the raison d’être of HCI4D’s existence. Best provided four guidelines to inform researchers embracing this challenge. This study commences by identifying the primary HCI4D-specific themes, and then carries out a systematic literature review of the HCI4D literature to build a corpus to support the analysis. The corpus is analysed to reflect on how well the field’s practices align with Best’s guidelines. The overall finding is that HCI4D researchers have largely been following Best’s guidelines and that the HCI4D field is demonstrating encouraging signs of emerging maturity.
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    Postgraduate Dissertation Assessment: Exploring Extant Use and Potential Efficacy of Visualisations
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2015-12-15) Van Biljon, Judy; Renaud, Karen
    In the context of assessment, two specific challenges face South African academics. The first is that their universities have experienced an unprecedented increase in postgraduate students without a concomitant increase in supervision capacity. The second challenge is that many South African students are studying in a second or third language and struggle to express themselves in English. It is notoriously difficult to write text that is easy to read. Examiners are thus finding it challenging to maintain their own existing high standards of consistency, accuracy and fairness. This paper focuses on identifying a way of making the assessment of dissertations more efficient, while retaining rigour and fairness. In so doing, we want to provide students with a tool that will help them to communicate their research more effectively. In seeking an intervention, we noted the emerging use of visualisation as a communication facilitator in other areas of academia. Given the innate human ability to understand and remember visual representations, and the deep level of cognitive processing required to produce such visualisations, the considered inclusion of visualisations could be the means we are seeking. In this paper we report on an investigation into the extant use and potential usefulness of visualisation in a number of dissertations. We also explore supervisor expectations with respect to the use of visualisation in research reporting. Based on our findings, we propose that a discourse be opened into the deliberate use of visualisation in postgraduate research reporting.