Browsing by Author "Kalema, Billy Mathias"
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Item Integrating a Chatting Tool into a Learning Management System(ICIEIS, 2014) Bagarukayo, Emily; Mpangwire, Violah; Kalema, Billy Mathiasthe objective of this study was to integrate a chatting tool into a Learning Management System (LMS) at Mbarara University with the purpose of aiding interaction, communication and collaboration among users. Many LMS’s are developed far from the developing countries context. Where the developers try to put them close to this context, some functionalities that promote the learning process are unavailable. In such situations the developers forget that some tools that are left out could be of great use to teaching and learning, leaving the system to be more of a content repository and not facilitating the learning process. Therefore this study integrated a chatting tool into a LMS. The functional requirements of the system were gathered through the use of interviews and observation methods. Before the roll out of the system, learners’ efficacy with the LMS was tested with a pretest questionnaire. After roll out, the learners were allowed to use the system for a 4 months semester before the post test was carried out. Results indicate that the learners’ efficacy with the LMS usage improved. The learners said the LMS increased their interest, motivation, and improved on knowledge and performance of other subjects due to increased collaboration with peers and instructors. The increased use of the system is expected to contribute to the learners’ ease of use, learning interest and motivation which will improve their throughput.Item Massive Open Online Courses for Africa by Africa(International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2014) Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy MathiasAfrica is known for inadequate access to all sorts of human needs including health, education, food, shelter, transport, security, and energy. Before the emergence of massive open online courses (MOOCs), open access to higher education (HE) was exclusive of Africa. However, as a generally affordable method of post-secondary education delivery, MOOCs place the developing countries at the centre of universal access to HE. This paper provides the strategy for MOOC implementation in the context of limited resources in Africa. The strategy is clustered under five baseline requirements: national accredited MOOC curriculum, electronic content development, development of an online and offline eLearning platform, establishment and funding of MOOC coordination units at public HEIs, and establishment of MOOC access hubs at strategic locations. Emerging from this paper is the insight that a new era of universal access to HE in Africa is achievable through MOOCs only if initial requirements are met by the respective governments.Item MOOCs for in-service teachers: The case of Uganda and lessons for Africa(Revista de pedagogia, 2017) Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy Mathias; Byabazaire, JohnIn 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.Item A Preliminary Speech Learning Tool for Improvement of African English Accents(IEEE, 2014) Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy MathiasSpeech recognition systems emphasise: accent recognition, recognition system performance through calculation of word error rate (WER), pronunciation modelling, speech-based interactions (tone, pitch, volume, background noise, speaker’s gender and age, speaking speed and quality of recording equipment) and speech database solutions. However, research into the use of speech recognition systems for improvement accents is scarcely available. In this paper, we focus on development of an speech recognition system for recognizing African English accents and enabling the speakers improve their English accents. This is achieved by using a dual speech recognition engine: the first, a multiple accent recogniser receives African English speech input, classifies it and sends to the second recogniser that evaluates the speech against standard English pronunciations. Speech deviations from standard English pronunciations are captured and read by the system as a way of supporting the learner to improve his/her reading proficiency. Preliminary tests indicate that terminologies that are rarely used in ordinary conversations (e.g. enthusiasm, exuberant, vague, etc) are most poorly pronounced irrespective of the educational level of the reader.Item A System Dynamics Model for Subsistence Farmers’ Food Security Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa(International Journal of System Dynamics Applications, 2016) Oyo, Benedict; Kalema, Billy MathiasFood security at subsistence farmers’ level in sub-Saharan Africa has become an issue of concern due to increasing vulnerability caused by a number of factors such as: changing climate, resource scarcity (e.g. land and inputs), environmental degradation (e.g. declining soil fertility, deforestation, and surface water eutrophication), market failures and weak public/donor support initiatives. In light of these challenges, farmers must be prepared to survive by self-provisioning. To pursue the fastest and most practical route to improved food security, focus should be on resilience based initiatives at household and community levels. In this paper, the authors investigate the factors that have enabled subsistence farmers to succeed despite the previous shocks and stresses, and develop a system dynamics model for sustainable food security based on initiatives exclusive to the farmers. The model is used to examine the question: how can innovative subsistence farmers engage in better livelihood and market orientated production irrespective of external public or donor support?