ICT in Education/Change Projects/2015C Tanzania ICT Research portal

Title of the change project :  DEVELOPMENT OF AN ICT RESEARCH PORTAL AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA 

Change agent : Doreen Richard Mushi

Email : doreenkaduma@gmail.com

Name of the organisation : The Open University of Tanzania

Country : Tanzania

Started date : January 2016

Status : Ongoing

Background of the project (problem):

The Open University of Tanzania (OUT) is an academic institution which offers its education services through Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode. Since its establishment in 1994, the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) has been a pioneer in using information and communication technologies (ICT) to support delivery of quality education to the community. The university through its Institute of Educational and Management Technologies (IEMT) has deployed various information systems for supporting key educational and operational activities at the university. These systems include e-learning management system (which is customised from Moodle), Student Academic Register Information System, Library Information System, Examination Data-Bank, Human Resource Management System (HRMS) and File Tracking System to name a few. Apart from deploying these systems, the institute has also been engaged in various research activities with the aim of assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of the existing systems in order to achieve university’s set goals.

Moreover, the institute has also explored innovative research on ICT integration in open and distance education specifically in the areas of mobile technologies, multimedia integration and plagiarism detection. ICT research has also been popular among university community including staff and students who use ICT tools to enhance their teaching and learning experiences. Research activities have been undertaken to provide insights and reflections on their experience in using ICT in supporting their didactic activities. Research on innovation and improvement of e-learning practices to enhance and promote pedagogy has also been conducted.

From this input, it can be seen that commendable research has been done on the use of ICTs at OUT and there is still further work that is being done. It is proposed that these research results should be made available to OUT community and the public in general for the aim of sharing, promoting and empowering the engagement of ICT research activities. There is therefore a need for having a platform that will facilitate storage, administration and accessibility of these research resources to the intended users.

Objectives :

The main objective of the project is to develop an ICT research portal that will provide OUT community with various information relating to ICT research activities. The aim is to make the information easily accessible and reachable by the intended users. The portal will also be an information bank for other stakeholders in the public who are interested in finding useful information on application of ICT in Education.

The developed portal will include information on the following:

·        Updates and various ICT related research projects that are currently taking place at the university

·        Publications and reports of various ICT research related activities

·        ICT researchers and research groups which are currently available at the university

·        Links to useful repositories that host openly licensed educational materials (OERs) that can be used in ICT research activities

Stakeholders :

Academic staff, researchers, students, developers and the general public

List of Activities :

Project activities will involve the following:

·        Conduct a survey to gather requirements of the portal

·        Analysis, design and development of the portal

·        Implementation, evaluation and launch of the portal

Expected result :

To have a running online research portal that will make available all information relating to ICT research activities at the university, publications and links to open licenced repositories.

6.  Actual result  :

7. The Project organisation :

Last Updated : February 8, 2016