Browsing by Author "Byabazaire, John"

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    MOOCs for in-service teachers: The case of Uganda and lessons for Africa
    (Revista de pedagogia, 2017) Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy Mathias; Byabazaire, John
    In recent times, computers and internet have penetrated secondary schools in Africa but with greater attention to students’ computer literacy than teachers. At the same time, previous studies on digital literacy of teachers are unsustainable and mainly skewed on pre-service teachers than in-service teachers. These realities point to the need to investigate and implement effective and sustainable initiatives for improving digital literacy and online life-long learning for in-service teachers in Africa. This paper therefore presents a specialised MOOC platform known as TEP (Teachers’ E-learning Portal) for digital literacy and online life-long learning for in-service teachers in Uganda. TEP is built for environments with inadequate access to computers, internet and technical assistance. As such, TEP is accessible online or offline, managed by accredited local universities in collaboration with beneficiary secondary schools, and runs on existing resources in schools (technical personnel, computers and internet). Results from initial implementation of a computer literacy MOOC through TEP indicate that irrespective of age, when teachers are adequately supported internally by their schools and externally by a university, can improve their digital literacy and subsequently engage in online life-long learning. In addition, the results both in terms of high percentage of teacher participants’ completions (89%) and high volume of educational e-content generated, confirm TEP as an effective, attractive, and self-sustainable MOOC platform for in-service teachers’ in resource constraint environments. The paper finishes with an analysis of the relevance of TEP to Africa.
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    Student Centered Learning in Uganda: The Mwalimu Online Study Tool
    (Computer Science for High School initiative, 2013) Byabazaire, John; Oyo, Benedict; Mijumbi, Rashid
    Education in high schools and colleges is changing rapidly. Student-centered learning (SCL) has shifted the focus from teachers to students. The idea of SCL is to encourage students to actively participate in their learning by providing them with an environment and resources that allow them to discover new knowledge and skills. In this paper, we present a design, implementation and evaluation of a student-centered learning tool - The Mwalimu – which is aimed at helping disadvantaged students in some high schools in Uganda. The objective is to bridge the ever widening gap in academic performance of students from the rich families and the low income ones, and/or that between rural and urban schools. To this end, we have developed an open courseware platform called Mwalimu Online Study Tool, from which students and/or teachers from any school can access subject specific content, examinations, learning video tutorials and a discussion forum which are moderated by carefully chosen teachers (Mwalimu subject consultants). The platform also accepts content from the crowd, verifies it using the subject consultants and adds it to the content repository if it is of acceptable quality. Even more, students can send feedback or seek for guidance with respect to specific content. Owing to the solid architecture on which it is developed, and the preliminary evaluations, Mwalimu promises to boost academic performance across all schools irrespective of their geographic location.