Contextualized IT Education in Tanzania: Beyond Standard IT Curricula

Abstract

Executive SummaryTumaini University at Iringa, Tanzania, started a new B.Sc. program in IT in 2007. In the course of planning and implementation of the program, we found out that standard ACM/IEEE IT curricula are not adequate for an IT program in a poor, developing country. The standard curricula describe, in detail, the competences that IT specialists in industrialized countries should possess, but the special characteristics of developing countries require a plethora of additional skills and competences that IT professionals in developing countries should have.The environment-natural, cultural, and technical-of developing countries brings about issues that IT specialists in industrialized countries do not know much about. Inadequate ICT and electrical infrastructure cause hardware to malfunction, wear out, and break; a hostile natural environment causes problems with equipment and eventually destroys it; quirks of local manufacturing and procurement complicate acquisitions; counterfeit products, inexistent customer care, and lack of warranty make purchases risky; excessively complex customs and shipping procedures make foreign acquisitions painful; widespread problems with corruption make accounting tricky; and lack of qualified staff is a systemic problem.In industrialized countries there is a high level of specialization and separation of professionals and their tasks, and one can easily delegate parts of a project to consultants. But in Tanzaniaespecially in rural Tanzania-there usually are no specialists available. IT professionals have to be able to do a large number of rudimentary tasks outside the field of IT. The most common tasks concern electrical installations, telephony, architectural design, structural modifications to buildings, protection from forces of nature, and all kinds of installation-related construction tasks.In an attempt to make IT education in our university relevant to the local environment and socioeconomic context, we have pinpointed four areas of IT curriculum that we have had to re-think. Firstly, the pedagogical approach must resonate with students' and teachers' learning styles. Secondly, the scope of IT education must be broader than the scope of IT education in industrialized countries. Thirdly, selection and emphasis of topics must meet the needs of Tanzanian society. Fourthly, all kinds of cultural, technical, environmental, and other contextual issues must be understood and taken into account in curriculum and course design.

Virtual labs versus hands-on labs for teaching and learning computer networking: A comparison study

“…This is caused by a number of factors including: shortage of well trained personnel and instructors, misguided policies, outdated curricula, majority of instructor use behaviorism pedagogical teaching approach and also, theoretically imported IT curricula which are not contextualized as per local environment (Mgaya, 1994;Lampi, 2013;Tedre, Bangu, & Nyagava, 2009;Dahms & Zakaria, 2015;Mtebe & Kisaka, 2016). Therefore, theoretically oriented education in developing countries including Tanzania affects the capability of the graduates when they will be employed in different fields like agriculture, ICT and engineering (Tedre, Bangu, & Nyagava, 2009). This calls for a need to prevent these failures of HLI in Tanzania and other developing countries by emphasizing practical skills to students over theoretical based education (Tedre, Bangu, and Nyagava, 2009).…”

“…Therefore, theoretically oriented education in developing countries including Tanzania affects the capability of the graduates when they will be employed in different fields like agriculture, ICT and engineering (Tedre, Bangu, & Nyagava, 2009). This calls for a need to prevent these failures of HLI in Tanzania and other developing countries by emphasizing practical skills to students over theoretical based education (Tedre, Bangu, and Nyagava, 2009). Figure 1.…”

“…Tedre, Bangu, and Nyagava (2009) emphasize on focusing on developing practical skills to students in HLI of Tanzania rather than emphasizing on theoretical IT curriculum which results into graduates who cannot bring changes and innovations to the society. Dillon (2008) argues that practical work in lab is central to the process of teaching and learning science subjects.…”

“…ICT has been argued to be providing better way to improve teaching and learning in Higher Learning Institutions (HLI) in developing countries (Sife, Lwoga, & Sanga, 2007). Tanzania has been investing in integrating ICT in education at various levels for decades (Tedre, Bangu, & Nyagava, 2009;Mwalongo, 2011). The evidence of this fact is that the first ICT courses in Tanzania was started by the University College Dar es Salaam in 1965 at the Institute of Adult Education, later on computer courses were offered to students in the Faculties of Engineering, Science, Commerce, and Arts and in year 1997, University of Dar es Salaam started a Master course in Computer Science (Mgaya, 1994).…”

Development Projects and ICT: A Review of Non‐Technical Aspects

“…Transportation problems may complicate movement of people and goods, delay implementation processes, and even make planned maintenance processes obsolete (Brewer, et al, 2006). The third aspect, cultural needs, refers to the argument that as the majority of ICTs are designed for the markets of developed countries, some degree of contextualization is often needed when ICT is transferred to developing countries (Tedre, Bangu, & Nyagava, 2009). …”