Digital education’s technologies and pedagogies are often a container for the values and assumptions of a small, disproportionately powerful, fraction of the world’s population. Often, this is referred to as the ‘Global North’ or ‘The West’. Yet most digital education takes place outside this container, in the Majority World – countries that hold most of the world’s population but are economically and politically less powerful. There is a need to see the global majority reflected in digital education and to learn from it.
This course uses concepts from the Majority World to frame digital education. You will learn about and use concepts like jugaad, ujamaa, buen vivir, and ushahidi to frame a digital education that is sensitive to the lived experiences of local communities. These concepts open possibilities for models of digital education that are: (a) responsive to underserved contexts (b) diverse; and (c) community and climate responsive.
Keywords: Majority World, Global South, ICT4D, minimal computing, DIY.
The course is divided into blocks. Each block will highlight a concept, a method, and a technology.
Block 1: Frugal digital education and jugaad
Jugaad emphasises non-conventional, frugal innovation. It is about using creative ways to develop workarounds, hacks, and practices using available resources, skills and know-how. In this block, we will use jugaad as a way of looking at digital education through the lens of what is already available and how we can more creatively use it in education.
Block 2: Territory and ujamaa
Ujamaa emphasizes collective well-being, equity, and self-reliance. At its core, Ujamaa views society as a family where decisions and resources are shared to ensure the common good. In this block, we will use ujamaa to explore why local educational practices are not ‘broken’, and why a community orientation is not in need of ‘liberation’. What would the hallmarks of ujamaa-inspired digital education be? How would the digital (and analogue!) technologies be configured? How would the social elements be designed and reinforced?
Block 3: Indigenous technology and buen vivir
Buen vivir stresses an orientation to the world that is community-centric, ecologically balanced and culturally sensitive. So in this block we ask, what types of digital education would buen vivir find appropriate? What is the balance between analogue and digital technologies? Who is being empowered in these digital configurations and who, or what knowledge concepts, are being marginalised?
“This course isn’t a performative presentation of diversity for the sake of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of the world’s digital education takes place in the Majority World. It is critical for us to explore and learn from this pluriverse and protect it from anything that it would erode its diversity".
- Michael Gallagher, Course Organiser
There will be an ongoing dialogue between you, your fellow students, and the course organiser, growing around your developing ideas and insights. Weekly participation is expected.
In each block we will spend time working with technologies currently in use in the Majority World to understand how they work and what role they might have in marginalised and/or Majority World contexts. No prior technological ability is required for any of this activity.
Many of us will be wading through unfamiliar terrain and many of you will have first-hand experiences with what we are covering in the course. All we ask is that you keep an open mind about all you encounter here, keep a critical and collaborative perspective with everything, be introspective about privilege and power, and help each other along in the journey. Not participating actively is essentially a theft of a different kind: a withdrawal of your perspective, expertise, and encouragement. We ask that you commit to this journey and participate every week. Encourage, share, support, critique, create, and collaborate.
There are two assignments in this course.
Critical reflection on a locally relevant technology (30%):
You will write a 1000-word critical reflection on the role, or potential role, of a technology used in the Majority World. Drawing on the readings, you will discuss its relation to digital education for marginalised contexts using one or more of the core concepts from the course (jugaad and/or ujamaa) and some of the course readings.
A final project in service of a particular community (70%):
You will conduct a final project for the course. It can take many forms, but it will have a practical output and a critical rationale. The practical output can be a design for a marginalised community, a policy or a strategy instrument, a community organising programme designed to serve informal learning communities, a report or a white paper. This will be discussed with your course organiser during the course. The critical rationale will accompany the practical output to explain the project aims, key decisions and reasons for them. There is considerable scope for creating an experimental assignment, using a non-conventional form or platform. This should be 2500 words or equivalent.
These assessments are intended to evaluate your understanding of different technologies and their underlying philosophies. It is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you can transform theoretical knowledge into a practical, coherent, and pedagogically sound project that accounts for the indigenous needs
On completion of the course, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate an ability to critique the impact of digital technologies on the ¿territory¿ of education in localised contexts;
- Apply critical analysis to issues informed by a range of sociocultural concepts used to frame digital education;
- Effectively discuss, analyse, and evaluate key issues related to digital education as practiced in localised contexts, demonstrating the conventions of academic discourse; and
- Use a wide range of participatory methods and technologies with some fidelity to digital education as practiced in select contexts
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Guerrero Millan, C., Nissen, B., & Pschetz, L. (2024). Cosmovision Of Data: An Indigenous Approach to Technologies for Self-Determination. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642598
Karadechev, P., Jensen, R. H., Vadm Jensen, V., Haxvig, H. A., Teli, M., & Löchtefeld, M. (2024). PluriCards: Engaging with the Pluriverse to Explore New Sustainability Research Directions. 2024 10th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), 262–271. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICT4S64576.2024.00034
Rangaswamy, N., & Sambasivan, N. (2011). Cutting Chai, Jugaad, and Here Pheri: Towards UbiComp for a global community. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 15(6), 553–564. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0349-x
Ruiz, N.; Gallagher, M.; & Najjuma, R. (2025). Postdigital (science and education) and the Majority World. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00545-0
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