Digital technologies offer opportunities that facilitate blended, on-line and mobile learning. However, little is known regarding their usability and acceptance in resource constrained higher institutions of learning. The purpose of this study therefore is to contribute to the growing evidence on the use and acceptance of digital technologies in a blended learning context. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is applied in this investigation. Results were obtained by descriptive, correlation and regression analysis, using data collected from a sample of 341 students doing their undergraduate programs. Findings confirm the original TAM's constructs and embedded in the external constructs are; students' access, students' awareness, student capacity and lecturer characteristics. From this, a model is derived. Findings have led to relevant theoretical and practical implications.

Background: Participation in higher education can be empowering for refugees, yet this participation is contingent on a range of structures, practices and policies, many of which are not readily accessible.Aim: Informed by Habermas’ lifeworlds, this study examined higher education meso-level institutional practices and how non-higher education actors support access and participation of refugee students.Setting: This research was conducted with (1) refugee students in three private universities and one public university representing several regions in Uganda, (2) administrative staff from these same universities and (3) staff from non-higher education support organisations that help navigate universities for refugee students.Methods: Data were generated through desk research identifying policy language, a survey and 25 semi-structured interviews with students and staff at universities and staff at support organisations.Results: Institutional policy homogeneously frames refugee students as international students, which in turn has a cascading impact on the lifeworlds of these students. The first theme includes university policies and administrative practices which structure the lifeworlds of these students. The second is the role of non-higher education supporting organisations that focus on refugee support and education. The third theme describes how non-academic structures, such as clubs and social networks designed to meet the students’ social welfare, are contingent in structuring the lifeworlds of these students.Conclusion: These themes interoperate and have a structuring effect on the lifeworlds of these students. The cascading impact of classifying refugee students as international students deserves further scrutiny, particularly in its impact on institutional and individual student patterns of participation.

Education systems in third world countries are grappling with high enrolments of children in schools, amidst dwindling resources. In this article, the authors question whether learning/teaching materials influence learning outcomes in a context where policy is more concerned about enrolment than quality of service. This article is drawn from data collected by UWEZO Uganda in a nationwide household education survey across eighty Ugandan districts in 2011. It focuses on children from sixteen districts, across four regions in Uganda, attending primary level three under Universal primary education. The findings reveal that, although learning and teaching resources are distributed and made available to learners and teachers, they have minimal influence on learning outcomes of learners in both Mathematics and English. Educators and policy makers Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 00:54 24 August 2015 110 Busingye and Najjuma Do learning and teaching materials influence learning outcomes should therefore deeply engage with the diverse nature of learning and teaching materials in poorly-resourced schools if learning outcomes are to be improved.

Educational inclusion for refugees is increasingly being framed through digital technologies. This is problematically characterised at the macro level by global and national narratives that portray the digital as an external and universal force capable of radical transformation and inclusion, and at the micro level with more nuanced accounts that acknowledge an already‐present political economy of technology of everyday practices of (non)adoption and use. Particularly for refugees, inclusion is further characterised by a persistent liminality with its attendant experiences of transition and tentativeness. Digital inclusion becomes an ongoing act of managing these liminal experiences, noting where barriers exist that stall efforts at further assimilation, and developing practices or workarounds that attempt to move refugees away from the margins of social inclusion. Such management is inherently precarious, and one made even more precarious in digital spaces, where inclusion is increasingly intertwined with systems of control and surveillance. To illustrate this, this article presents findings from a project exploring educational participation by refugee students in Ugandan universities. It notes the subtle tensions that emerge from the expectations of participation in university life, and Ugandan life more broadly, amidst digital structures and narratives that complicate inclusion. In this article, we argue that more nuanced conceptualisations of digital inclusion, ones rooted in liminal experiences, are needed to anchor digital technologies in refugee communities.