"We Need More Than Laptops!" Technology Assistance for Transitioning International Students

Although information and communication technologies (ICT's) have become pervasive across various aspects of human endeavors including educational settings, their adoption and diffusion vary among different developing and developed countries, often described as the digital divide. In this work, we examined concerns and considerations of students from developing countries transitioning into graduate and undergraduate studies in developed nations and assessed the personal and institutional resources available to them during their transition along with specific focus on the degree of their exposure to ICT's before and after their transition. The results showed that respondents had experienced different levels of technology exposure in their home countries, and that neither their sources of assistance in their home countries nor in their host countries provided the required aid for transitioning across the digital divide.