research-article

Beyond strict illiteracy: abstracted learning among low-literate users

Authors:

S. Raghu Menon,

Edward Cutrell,

Kentaro ToyamaAuthors Info & Claims

ICTD '10: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

Article No.: 23, Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/2369220.2369241

Published: 13 December 2010 Publication History

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges in designing applications for developing communities is that potential users may have limited literacy. Past work in UI design for low-literate users has focused on illiteracy as the inability to read per se, with little recognition to other cognitive differences between literate and non-literate users.

In this paper, we investigate the correlation between literacy and cognitive skills for conceptual abstraction using video-based skills training. We performed a controlled experiment that compared 28 non-literate and 28 literate participants from low-income communities in India. Results confirm that both the groups did worse when a skill required generalization from instructional material, compared with the case when instructional material was specifically and exactly tailored to the skill. Literate participants did better than non-literate participants all-around on this learning task. In addition, we found that diversification of examples within instructions helped literate participants in transfer of learning, but did not help non-literate participants. We conclude that ICT UI and content for low-literate users should be sensitive to issues beyond strict illiteracy, to additional cognitive differences among these users.

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Index Terms

Beyond strict illiteracy: abstracted learning among low-literate users
1. Information systems
  1. Information systems applications
    1. Multimedia information systems
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICTD '10: Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

December 2010

479 pages

ISBN:9781450307871

DOI:10.1145/2369220

Conference Chair:
Tim Unwin,
General Chair:
Dorothea Kleine,
Program Chair:
Kentaro Toyama

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 13 December 2010

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ICTD '10

ICTD '10: International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

December 13 - 16, 2010

London, United Kingdom

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su151914432
Hasan MSaxena DRubaiat YAhamed SGuha S(2023)Design Recommendations towards Developing a Smartphone-Based Point-of-Care Tool for Rural Bangladeshi UsersInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.217546240:4(965-985)Online publication date: 16-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2023.2175462
Aker JCariolle JAker JCariolle J(2023)Rethinking ICT4DMobile Phones and Development in Africa10.1007/978-3-031-41885-3_6(155-170)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41885-3_6
Rüller SAal KTolmie PHartmann ARohde MWulf V(2022)Speculative Design as a Collaborative Practice: Ameliorating the Consequences of Illiteracy through Digital TouchACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/348791729:3(1-58)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
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