ETIP – A tip to help develop IT systems for rural Kenyan education. : Exploring the potential of ICT for informal, non-formal and formal learning in the slums of Nairobi.

This thesis explores the existing IT conditions of a Kenyan upper secondary school, with the purpose of identifying obstacles and opportunities that need to be considered in developing an IT solution. There has been previous research on IT learning in developing countries, like Jobe’s Do-It-Yourself Learning in Kenya: Exploring mobile technologies for merging non-formal and informal learning from 2014, or Marwan’s Empowering English through Project-Based Learning with ICT from 2015. The infrastructure for IT is rapidly improving in Kenya. With projects such as the laptop project they are showing the world that they are serious about IT usage in education. This thesis overall approach adheres to the ambitions of Action-Design-Research on a single case study made on a charity funded school in the outskirts of Nairobi. In order to establish an understanding of how IT was currently used, and desires for future developments 5 teachers and 4 students were interviewed, and 4 classroom observations were conducted. Results from his study highlights the most pressing factors and a set of design principles named the ETIP-model and the 7-ETIP design principles, named after the identified areas Educational IT-usage, TPACK-competence, Infrastructure, and Personal attitude. The conclusion is that it is important to consider all aspects of the ETIP-model and the 7-ETIP design principles, to insure important aspects of creating an IT system for rural Kenyan schools are taken into account.