ICT in Education/Change Projects/2015B Development of Digital content for Teaching ICS subject in Secondary Schools in Tanzania, Case of Dodoma Municipality.

Name : Lucian Vumilia Ngeze

Institution : The University of Dodoma, Tanzania

Beneficiaries: Secondary School students and Teachers

Location of the Project : Secondary Schools in Dodoma Municipality, Dodoma, Tanzania

Duration of the Project : 16 Months (From June 2015 to October 2016)

Project Status: Ongoing

1. Background

The quality of the teaching materials used by teachers and learners has a great impact on the quality of education that learners acquire. For many years, the teaching materials in our Secondary Schools have been static, non-interactive, with pictures printed on pages in books. Students have been using these static materials in their struggle to achieve high grades to be able to go to High Schools and later in higher education institutions. These types of materials have not succeeded in providing appropriate learning environment and the desired performance for students. Recently, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoEVT) has put efforts to train educational administrators and teachers on the integration of ICT in teaching and learning. MoEVT has several projects to equip secondary schools with necessary ICT equipment to help in the effective integration of ICT in the teaching and learning process. Design and development of the digital contents for ICT subject for Ordinary level Secondary Schools will not only help teachers but will also increase the number of schools taking the subject Information and Computer Studies (ICS), since ICS is now being taught on optional bases in public schools. However, this native digital content will replace digital contents from foreign countries which are now being used by many private schools. This Change Project aims at designing, development and deployment of interactive local digital content for teaching ICT subject in Secondary Schools in Dodoma Municipality. The completion of this project will be used as a stepping stone in the efforts to integrate ICT in teaching and learning. The digital content developed will be interactive and engaging so that students will be able to learn on their own.

2. Statement of the Problem

The use of ICT in teaching and learning in Tanzania is still at low stage and efforts are being made by MoEVT and other partners to integrate ICT in teaching and learning at different levels of the education system. In 2005, the Government introduced a subject known as Information and Computer Studies (ICS) to be taught in Secondary Schools for Forms 1-4 but teaching of this subject has faced so many challenges including lack of the necessary infrastructure and qualified teachers. However, due to lack of experienced personnel in the field, the subject has not been adopted by many schools, and is still being taught on option basis in public schools while private schools with the necessary infrastructure are teaching it as a core subject. This project aims at designing and developing interactive local digital content based on the prescribed syllabi for teaching ICT in Secondary Schools. Completion of this project will increase the number of schools teaching the same subject and hence promoting the integration of ICT in teaching and learning.

3. Project Objectives

The main objective of this project is to develop interactive local digital contents that will be used to teach ICT subject at Ordinary Secondary School level, a case of Secondary Schools in Dodoma Municipality.

Specifically, the project aims to:

i. Develop course contents for the given ICT syllabus including preparations of slides for the course contents and capturing audio and video clips relevant to the course outline.

ii. Combine the slides, audio and video clips into an interactive and engaging digital content using necessary authoring tools.

iii. Help in the teaching of ICT in Secondary Schools in Dodoma Municipality using the developed digital contents and finally to help all other Secondary Schools in Tanzania to integrate ICT in teaching and learning.

iv. Evaluate the effectiveness of the developed digital contents for ICT and finally to improve the content ready to be consumed by other schools.

4. Methodology

ADDIE Model will be used. This involves five stages

>Analysis

>Design

>Development

>Implementation

>Evaluation

5. Stakeholders

This change project will involve the following stakeholders:

• Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoEVT) which is responsible for managing teachers’ training, quality assurance and control; curriculum design, and education policy formulation.

• Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Government (PMO-RALG) under Prime-Ministers’ Office is responsible for daily supervision of education provision for primary and secondary education. At the lower level, the change project will have a direct link to the secondary school students and teachers from Secondary Schools in Dodoma Municipality. This will be particularly to those schools with the necessary minimum infrastructure to deliver the digital content such as computer laboratory and electricity.

6. Expected Results

The digital content for Information and Computer Studies for Ordinary Level Education will have the following benefits to our education sector:

i. The project will solve the issue of shortage of skilled teachers to teach subjects involving ICT for Ordinary level secondary education in Tanzania.

ii. Since the materials will be classroom tested before being used, they will help to raise ICT awareness to secondary school students and hence increasing performance.

iii. The content will help students to bridge to the next educational level (high school and higher education) with ease as these levels require basic knowledge in ICT and hence reducing digital divide in the country.

iv. The content developed will be used as a tool to encourage many students to venture into science, ICT and engineering professions.

7. Project Team

S/No	Name	Role
1	Mr. Lucian Ngeze	Instructional Designer
2	Mr. Eduard Elias	Multimedia Expert
3	Mr. Victor Claret	Animation Expert
4	Secondary school teachers	Content Reviewers
5	2nd and 3rd Year Students from BSc. Multimedia Technology and Animations	Assistants in the Design, Development and Editing stages
6	Secondary School students	·        Testing of the developed contents Consumers of the developed digital contents

To be able to achieve the goals and objectives of the project, instructional design principles will be used in which ADDIE model will be employed. The ADDIE model consists of 5 important stages; Analysis of the requirements by students and teachers, Design of the materials, Development of the content using different authoring tools, Implementation of the project using including assessment methods such as quizzes, problems, assignments, MCQ and questions for discussion and Evaluation of the developed content to receive feedback from users.