Novice researchers' perspectives on affordances in ICT4D research collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration is fundamental to progress in the field of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) research where interdisciplinary teams are involved in the requirements elicitation, design, implementation and evaluation of context-sensitive digital solutions. Research collaboration harbors the potential for knowledge exchange, improving research impact and human development; it is often a requirement in grant applications for funding. Despite the known benefits and incentives, there is evidence that research collaborations between African countries are lacking compared to those with and between other geographic regions. Furthermore, research collaboration has been studied as a variable but theorisation of the concept is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to theorize research collaboration as an object with affordances based on the perspective of novice researchers (master's, doctoral and postdoctoral students) in South Africa. The data capturing from a survey and focus groups with ICT4D novice researchers from different universities in South Africa produced 39 responses to be captured, transcribed and analyzed with Atlas.ti 8 using thematic analysis. The main contribution is the theorisation of research collaboration as an object with properties and then an investigation of the affordances offered to novice researchers together with the facilitating conditions and conversion factors influencing the actualisation of those affordances. The practical contribution is the insight gained into the perspectives of novice researchers as representatives of the future generation of research collaborators.