Challenges to Transferring Western Field Research Materials and Methods to a Developing World Context

Much of the research currently undertaken in the area of intelligent tutoring systems hails from Western countries. To counteract any bias that this situation produces, to gain greater representation from the rest of the world, and to produce systems and publications that take cultural factors into account, experts recognize the need for more intercultural evaluations and collaborations. For these collaborations to be successful, though, methods and materials require modification. Field work methodologies used in developed countries have to be nuanced when transferred to developing world contexts. In specific, the paper describes five challenges that researchers must address in the transfer process: technology adoption, school support, infrastructure, student culture, and force majeure.