Students’ experience and perceptions By; Dr. Joel S. Mtebe Lecturer in Computer Science Director of; Center for Virtual Learning University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania http://works.bepress.com/mtebe/ 3rd international conference of the AVU

1. Blending face-to-face postgraduate courses delivery
with MOOCs in a sub-Saharan African University:
Students’ experience and perceptions
Dr. Joel S. Mtebe
University of Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania
http://works.bepress.com/mtebe/

2. 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).

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• curricula are outdated (Escher et al., 2014).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

4. 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
.

5. 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)

6. Researchapproach, 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

7. Researchapproach, 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

8. Researchapproach, 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.

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

10. • 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.

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

12. 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.

13. Major Outcomes/Results
Quality of video recordings
– Two-thirds (71.5%) students taking HCI and
– 60.9% of students taking RM

14. Major Outcomes/Results
Language
• More than 90% of students indicated that the language
used in the videos was understandable

15. Major Outcomes/Results
Students’ challenges during accessing MOOCs
• Speed of the Internet
• Use subtitles to catch up with explanation of topics from the
instructor

16. 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

17. SUGGESTION FOR FUTURE
• The course was Blended delivery not full online
• Course offered to postgraduate students

18. Contacts
• Dr. Joel S. Mtebe
Center for Virtual Learning
University of Dar es Salaam
jmtebe@gmail.com
+255715383366
Web: http://works.bepress.com/mtebe

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