Blending face-to-face postgraduate courses delivery with MOOCs in a sub-Saharan African University:

Students’ experience and perceptions

 

Dr. Joel S. MtebeUniversity of Dar es Salaam,Tanzaniahttp://works.bepress.com/mtebe/

Motivation, problem area

• The quality of computer science education in higher education in sub-Saharan Africa is reported to be poor.

• Do not have well-trained faculty members to teach computer science courses effectively (Chetty et al., 2007)

• Rely on behaviorism pedagogical approach where students become recipient of instruction from their teachers (Bezy, 2013).

Motivation, problem area

• Massive shortage of doctoral-level faculty members to as low as 20% (Bezy, 2013).

• Irrelevant curricula (Bezy, 2013).

– Adapting these curricula has resulted into producing graduates who do not have the necessary skills to develop solutions that address the African challenges (Rai et al., 2013).

• curricula are outdated (Escher et al., 2014).

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Motivation, problem area

• AVU Initiatives:

– Computer Science program from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne, Australia to four African Universities in 2003

– Applied computer science degree program in collaboration with 18 African Universities

• MOOCs has not been fully exploited.

Research Objectives

• This article reports on the experience complementing face-to-face delivery with MOOCs from Coursera platform.

• Topics from two courses offered in Coursera platform were blended with – Human Computer Interaction (HCI) – Research Methodology (RM)

Research approach, Methodology

• The HCI and RM courses were offered to Postgraduate students taking masters degree in computer science at the University of Dar es Salaam.

• The face-to-face lectures were conducted once per week for 2 hours.

• Learning materials were shared with students via the Moodle LMS accessible at http://lms.udsm.ac.tz/.

• The MOOCs resources were carefully selected from similar courses offered in Coursera platform

Research approach, Methodology

• The HCI course was offered by Scott Klemmer from University of California, San Diego USA.

• Out of 7 modules, 4 modules were relevant to the course offered at UDSM.

• Course was offered to 14 students in academic year 2014/2015

Research approach, Methodology

• The Research Methodology course was offered by Gerben Moerman of University of Amsterdam.

• 6 modules were relevant to the course that was taught at UDSM.

• The course was offered to 28 students in academic year 2015/2016.

Discussion forum

Discussion forums were created to enable students discuss some specific concepts discussed in the MOOC videos.

• At the end of the course, students were asked their experiences and challenges faced during the delivery of the course especially videos from Coursera platform.

Research approach, Methodology

• A questionnaire was prepared via Google Docs and sent to students – 14 students HCI.– 28 students RM.

Major Outcomes/Results

• Learning new concepts

– Many students pointed out that videos they did not learn something new perse but rather they videos provided more insightful explanation of the many concepts that were explained in the classroom.

Major Outcomes/Results

Quality of video recordings– Two-thirds (71.5%) students taking HCI and – 60.9% of students taking RM

Major Outcomes/Results

Language• More than 90% of students indicated that the language

used in the videos was understandable

Major Outcomes/Results

Students’ challenges during accessing MOOCs

• Speed of the Internet

• Use subtitles to catch up with explanation of topics from the instructor

Discussion and Conclusion

• Students found videos from Coursera were useful and helped them to better understand the concepts that were explained in the classroom during face-to-face delivery.

• Language was not found to be a barrier contrary to previous research (Boga & Mcgreal, 2014; Liyanagunawardena et al., 2013; Michael Trucano, 2013)

• Low Internet speed has continued to be a challenge to the majority of students

SUGGESTION FOR FUTURE

• The course was Blended delivery not full online

• Course offered to postgraduate students

Contacts

• Dr. Joel S. Mtebe

Center for Virtual LearningUniversity of Dar es Salaam

jmtebe@gmail.com+255715383366

Web: http://works.bepress.com/mtebe

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