The search for an open curricula platform

December 14, 2017

In the movement towards more open education, the question eventually arises as to which content management systems (CMS) are most conducive to open research. There is a wide spectrum of hosting services available to researchers looking to create, manage, and publish their open curricula, and each platform offers flexibility and constraints with larger design implications…

Resources from the Global Impact Study

July 31, 2014

We’ve developed numerous resources to help answer the overarching question, “Why do public access ICTs matter for development? The goal of the resources listed below is to help make the study’s findings and data more accessible and relevant to the international development, public library, and public access communities. It is our hope that you’ll find these materials useful in understanding the study’s key findings and recommendations, as well as for use in your own work

New infographic: Why does public access to technology matter for development?

May 21, 2014

TASCHA is excited to release a new infographic based on findings from the Global Impact Study of Public Access ICTs! Many thanks go to the team at JumpStart Georgia for helping us design what we think is a pretty cool visualization of why public access is so important and why it matters to development. Please feel free to share, promote, and use widely.

Project in Vietnam uses Open Data Kit (ODK) for data collection

April 17, 2014

We recently launched a project that is looking at public internet access and use in Vietnam. One of the main objectives of the study is to understand the role library-like institutions, such as cultural post offices in Vietnam, play in providing public access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Surveying public access venues, users, and non-users to gather data about public access in Vietnam is a critical component of the study. While critical to answering our research questions, collecting data on a large scale like in this project can be challenging. As such, we are excited to employ a different method of data collection in this study, using the Open Data Kit (ODK), developed here at the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Using Android-based tablets, researchers in the field will implement the surveys and collect data through ODK.

Open research in practice: Open source, open data

April 16, 2013

TASCHA is committed to research that contributes to advancing knowledge and practice, and that can be used to make better decisions. One element of this commitment is open research — making research processes, tools, findings, and data broadly accessible and encouraging others to build on and extend our work. TASCHA implemented project, the Global Impact Study, is an excellent example of how TASCHA is striving to make research open and accessible.