Instructors' educational ICT use in higher education in developing countries: evidence from three Ethiopian Universities

Developing countries exert much effort to improve the quality of their higher education. The use of information and communication technology (ICT) may address some of the quality problems in higher education in these countries. Previous studies on this topic stressed the impact of ICT use on learning, the status of ICT integration in education, and the factors associated with ICT integration with minimal attention to how instructors in higher education in developing countries use ICT. This study employed a qualitative approach, collecting data from twenty-one by then active instructors in three public universities in Ethiopia through focus group discussion to explore the educational use of ICT. The data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically using ATLAS.ti software. The results show that instructors in the selected Ethiopian universities use ICT for course facilitation, course materials preparation, professional development, assessment, and information and resource exchange purposes. However, these findings do not reveal a transformative use of ICT in education, which may imply that ICT is not used in a manner that alters existing teacher-centered approaches. This study suggests that future studies may focus on why instructors rarely use ICT in a transformative way and developing a tailor-made and efficient model that informs practice.