Department of Information Technology- Research Articles

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    Utilizing IT to enhance knowledge sharing for school educators in developing countries.
    (Wiley, 2016-03-01) Kalema, Billy M.M.; Motsi, Lovemore; Motjolopane, Ignitia M.
    Knowledge has been considered a critical factor for any organization’s survival however its retention and utilization has remained a challenge to many organizations in developing countries education institutions inclusive. These challenges are mostly attributed to the fact that knowledgeable employees often leave organizations before they could share their valuable knowledge and expertise. In schools of developing countries in particular, educators struggle for subsistence and many leave to seek for greener pastures. Such exodus of educators has led to knowledge loss and has widened the knowledge gap between the schools for the rich and those for the poor. This has been worse especially in the most challenging subjects like Science and Mathematics. Closing this gap, schools need to depend on the knowledge of other experienced educators that are still in the Education system in order to enhance the capabilities of those that are inexperienced. For this reason, leveraging Information Technology (IT) to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, communicate ideas, exchange views and information between educators is paramount. There is a need for schools in developing countries to have guidelines of how IT could be utilized for knowledge sharing. The major objective of this paper is therefore to report on the utilization of IT to enhance Knowledge Sharing (KS) among educators in developing countries taking a case of South Africa. The Social Exchange Theory (SET), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) were used to design a conceptual framework for the study. Data was collected from secondary schools’ educators in Tshwane South district of South Africa and was analyzed quantitatively. The results indicated that, knower’s attitude is a high significant contributing factor whereas dependence of the knower is the least and insignificant in the utilization of IT to enhance knowledge sharing. Practically, this study could be leveraged by schools and governments to entrench tacit knowledge and to address the brain drainage associated with the continuous exodus of the skilled and experienced educators. Further still, the designed framework could be used by Information Systems scholars to extend research of knowledge sharing and management.
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    Enhanced resource allocation algorithm for heterogeneous wireless networks.
    (Fuji Technology Press Ltd., 2020-09-14) Mathonsi, Topside E.; Tshilongamulenzhe, Tshimangadzo Mavin; Buthelezi, Bongisizwe Erasmus
    In heterogeneous wireless networks, service providers typically employ multiple radio access technologies to satisfy the requirements of quality of service (QoS) and improve the system performance. However, many challenges remain when using modern cellular mobile communications radio access technologies (e.g., wireless local area network, long-term evolution, and fifth generation), such as inefficient allocation and management of wireless network resources in heterogeneous wireless networks (HWNs). This problem is caused by the sharing of available resources by several users, random distribution of wireless channels, scarcity of wireless spectral resources, and dynamic behavior of generated traffic. Previously, resource allocation schemes have been proposed for HWNs. However, these schemes focus on resource allocation and management, whereas traffic class is not considered. Hence, these existing schemes significantly increase the end-to-end delay and packet loss, resulting in poor user QoS and network throughput in HWNs. Therefore, this study attempts to solve the identified problem by designing an enhanced resource allocation (ERA) algorithm to address the inefficient allocation of available resources vs. QoS challenges. Computer simulation was performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed ERA algorithm by comparing it with a joint power bandwidth allocation algorithm and a dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm. On average, the proposed ERA algorithm demonstrates a 98.2% bandwidth allocation, 0.75 s end-to-end delay, 1.1% packet loss, and 98.9% improved throughput performance at a time interval of 100 s.