Search

A preview of the international dashboard of trends in education suggests that Open Education Resources (OERs) have and will continue to impact the provision of education during institutional closure owing to the global Covid-19 pandemic. However, the toughest question that is often presented to OERs promoters regards the efficiency (sustainability) and the pedagogical effectiveness of OERs: If education resource users are not cognizant and do not pay for the production, distribution, and utilization of the required resources, then, how can the production, distribution, and utilization of such resources be efficiently and effectively used? Basing on usage-logs and interview data that were collected from 25 teachers in 10 Government-Aided Secondary Schools in Uganda, this report presents a Discourse Analysis of teachers’ use of OERs on Kolibri and draws on such insights gained to propose a potentially transformative model for efficient and effective utilization of OERs to enhance students’ learning outcomes during COVID-19 schools lockdown.

Although eye-tracking technologies such as Tobii-T120/TX and Eye-Tribe are steadily becoming ubiquitous, and while their appropriation in education can aid teachers to collect robust information on how students move their eyes when reading and engaging with different learning objects, many teachers of Luganda language are yet to gain experiences of utilizing these technologies in their teaching. This paper emerges from a semester-long (17 weeks) study which followed a Design Based Research (DBR) approach and deployed qualitative techniques to cultivate the experiences of 68 Luganda language teacher-trainees in utilizing different emerging Educational Technologies (ETs) in their teaching. The study was guided by Kolb (1984)’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and Reeves (2006)’s model of conducting research in authentic e-learning contexts. During the study, trainees concretely experienced, abstractly conceptualized and made observational reflections about their own active experimentations of different ETs in teaching Luganda language. In this paper, we describe how we supported the trainees to conduct an active experimentation of Tobii-T120 to track how students moved their eyes when reading and engaging with learning objects on an emulated smart phone. Following the observational reflections, which the trainees made about their active experimentation, this paper also presents a discourse analysis thereof.

While many young learners of the 21st century have grown up with, and generally prefer to learn using Emerging Technologies (ETs), a few teachers of Luganda language graduate with learning experiences of integrating ETs in their teaching. One of the most crucial stages of gaining experiences in any subject or object of interest is making Abstract Conceptualizations (ACs) about it (Kolb, 1984). Whereas scaffolding ACs has potential to expand teacher’s knowledge of integrating ETs in teaching, it is difficult to enact in a pedagogically sound manner. This paper emerges from a Design Based Research in which 68 Luganda language teacher-trainees at Makerere University were enrolled into a semester-long (17 weeks) blended learning course aimed at cultivating their experiences of integrating ETs in teaching. The study was informed by Kolb (1984)’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and Reeves (2006)’s model of conducting research in authentic e-learning contexts. Six distinct abstract conceptualisations of ETs emerged from trainees’ responses. This paper discusses the implications of such abstract conceptualization in the revitalisation of Luganda language.