ICT integration in secondary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa is still at an early stage and already faces several setbacks that may undermine the various initiatives undertaken by governments and the private sector to promote the use of computers in schools. Based on literature and other research, this may be attributed to the fact that no guidelines for proper ICT adoption in secondary schools exist; and furthermore, most integration cases were done haphazardly with no systematic approach based on the existing frameworks or tailored towards the real context in the schools concerned. The present study aimed to provide guidelines for the successful integration of ICT into schools in Cameroon. A review of some existing frameworks for ICT integrations in schools, as well as the innovative pathways that some developing countries have taken to ensure the successful integration of ICT into schools were explored through a literature review, revealing the trends and challenges of ICT integration in schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. The current status of ICT in schools in Cameroon being at an introductory stage was established from the available literature. This led to the use of a single case study from the Western Region of Cameroon, where four secondary schools were selected from the most advanced schools in terms of ICT integration. Participants consisting of principals, ICT co-ordinators, teachers, and students were interviewed, in order to establish the current status of ICT in each school, as well as those factors affecting or promoting the adoption of ICT. Teachers’ and students’ surveys, as well as existing documentation were used to triangulate the data gathered from interviews with school principals and ICT co-ordinators. Data were descriptively analysed – and the findings revealed that ICT is at the introductory stage of integration in the Fluck’s Model of ICT development in schools. At school level, the lack of infrastructure and an ICT adoption plan were found to be the key opposing factors to ICT integration, whereas several enablers were identified, such as the positive attitude of teachers towards ICT, the existence of a minimum recurring budget for ICT adoption through parents’ funding, as well as the continually decreasing cost of ICT infrastructure in the market. Based on the findings and experiences from successfully proven projects, a set of guidelines were derived for schools’ decision-makers. It is critical to put in place a well-structured policy for ICT in the school and to recognise all the ICT-related costs.

Note:

The problem this descriptive study dealt with was the fear (computerphobia) administrators, teachers, and noneducators have concerning the acceptance of microcomputers in the educational setting. The MAXHELP Project is an Air University sponsored program to assist the local schools in scientific and technological education. The 12 hour MAXHELP Microcomputer Orientation Course has graduated over 500 educators from seven Alabama school districts. This study used the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ). This instrument was developed at the Inter-Institutional Program for the Reasearch and Development Center for Teacher Education, The University of Texas at Austin, by Hall, George and Rutherford. The SoCQ was mailed to a random sample of 300 MAXHELP graduates. A total of 212 responses were used in the study. This report concludes that the administrator and teacher groups are moving through the stages of concern when compared with the typical "non-user." Teachers show greater concerns relating to Management and administrators have greater concerns on Consequence, Collaboration, and Refocusing. Administrators are not users of microcomputers in the classroom, but are very concerned about how to facilitate the spread of microcomputers throughout the school curriculum. In general, the data indicate more similarity of teaching concerns by age, years teaching experience, and area of specialization. Concerns relating to the demands of microcomputers upon the individual who has to use microcomputers in the classroom cannot be satisfied without the microcomputer being available. Personal stage concerns will probably remain high until more microcomputers are available in the classroom. Teachers who have been in the classroom between one to six years appear to be the most prone to resist change. Special attention needs to be given to this group to demonstrate the advantages of the microcomputer as a teaching tool and as an administrative aid at both the pre-service and in-service levels.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Research on tutoring has shown that the student's interaction with the tutor determines the learning outcomes. In human tutoring, the responsibility of the interaction is shared between the tutor and the student. In the case of a computer coach such as the McGill Statistics Tutor, the control of the interaction is put entirely in the hands of the learners. Learners' ability to interact with the system productively therefore represents a critical aspect affecting the learning outcomes. This ability of help seeking (Nelson-LeGall, 1981) has not been well researched from a cognitive science point of view in the context of computer-supported learning (Aleven et al., 2003). The aims of the present work were to elaborate and test a cognitive model of help seeking and to examine the prevalence of help seeking in a problem-based computer-supported learning situation, as well as individual differences and the effect of the progression in a sequence of tasks with respect to help seeking. / Participants were 18 graduate students from a faculty of Education of a Canadian university. The seven-hour experiment involved working in pairs to solve a very challenging statistics problem for which students did not have sufficient background. A computer coach based on human tutoring, the McGill Statistics Tutor, was available to provide help with every aspect of the task. / Data consisted of two complementary sources. The main source was the dialogue between the participants as they worked on the statistics problem using the computer coach. The students' use of the computer coach and solutions to the tasks were also integrated into the database. / Data analysis consisted of statistical analyses using log-linear models. Conditional probability graphs were also constructed from the data. / The results were consistent with the help seeking model. Individual differences were found in terms of emphasis on certain help seeking activities. Effects of the progression in the sequence of tasks were also found. The quality of the solutions students elaborated corresponded to specific profiles of help seeking. The structure of help seeking episodes was established and corresponded to the model. These results have implications for the design of computer coaches and instructional situations.

Authors augment their texts using devices such as bold and italic typeface to signal important information to the reader. These typographical text signals are an example of a signal designed to have some affect on others. However, some signals emerge through the unplanned, indirect, and collective efforts of a group of individuals. Paths emerge in parks without having been designed by anyone. Objects accumulate wear patterns that signal how others have interacted with the object. Books open to important, well studied pages because the spine has worn, for example (Hill, Hollan, Wroblewski, & McCandless, 1992). Digital text and the large-scale collaboration made possible through the internet provide an opportunity to examine how unplanned, collaborative text signals could emerge. A software application was designed, called CoREAD, that enables readers to highlight sections of the text they deem important. In addition, CoREAD adds text signals to the text using font colour, based on the group's collective history and an aggregation function based on self-organising systems. The readers are potentially influenced by the text signals presented by CoREAD but also help to modify these same signals. Importantly, readers only interact with each other indirectly through the text. The design of CoREAD was greatly inspired by the previous work on history-enriched digital objects (Hill & Hollan, 1993) and at a more general level it can be viewed as an example of distributed cognition (Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh, 2000). / Forty undergraduate students read two texts on topics from psychology using CoREAD. Students were asked to read each text in order to write a summary of it. After each new student read the text, the text signals were changed to reflect the current group of students. As such, each student read the text with different text signals presented. / The data were analysed for each text to determine if the text signals that emerged were stable and valid representations of the semantic content of the text. As well, the students' summaries were analysed to determine if students who read the text after the text signals had stabilised produced better summaries. Three methods demonstrated that CoREAD was capable of generating stable typographical text signals. The high importance text signals also appeared to capture the semantic content of the texts. For both texts, a summary made of the high signals performed as well as a benchmark summary. The results did not suggest that the stable text signals assisted readers to produce better summaries, however. Readers may not respond to these collaborative text signals as they would to authorial text signals, which previous research has shown to be beneficial (Lorch, 1989). The CoREAD project has demonstrated that readers can produce stable and valid text signals through an unplanned, self-organising process.

This thesis considers the problem of how to bring foreign language students with a limited vocabulary knowledge, consisting mainly of high-frequency words, to the point where they are able to adequately comprehend authentic texts in a target domain or genre. It proposes bridging the vocabulary gap by first determining which word families account for 95% of the target domain's running words, and then having students learn these word families by reading texts in an order that allows for the incremental introduction of target vocabulary. This is made possible by a recently developed computer program that sorts through a collection of texts and (a) finds texts with a suitably high proportion of target words, (b) ensures that over the course of these texts, most or all target words are encountered five or more times, and (c) creates an order for reading these texts, such that each new text contains a reasonably small number of new target words and a maximum number of familiar words. A computer-based study, involving the sorting of 293 news texts, resulted in the finding that all three of these conditions could be met for the majority of texts tested, provided two key changes were first made to the sorting algorithm. A potential problem with the computerized approach is also addressed. The approach takes for granted that a reader must be familiar with 95% of a text's tokens in order to adequately comprehend the text, but a recently published study challenges this assumption by claiming that 98% is a more accurate figure. A close analysis of the study, however, points out a serious methodological flaw which undermines this result.

This research investigated the impact of "embedded teaching" and "learner-controlled" instruction on student learning of algebra in a controlled computer-tutoring environment. Three versions of a computer tutor were developed to establish three experimental conditions. Condition 1 corresponds to a conventional "lecture-demonstration-practice" in which conceptual knowledge is presented by the computer tutor as a coherent entity prior to engagement in problem-solving activities (Lecture-Demonstration-Practice). Condition 2 reflects "embedded teaching" in which before students begin practice, the computer tutor uses examples to demonstrate problem-solving processes, introducing concepts and principles, as they become relevant (Embedded-Teaching Condition). Condition 3 is a "learner-controlled" instruction in which students engage directly in problem-solving activities without receiving any prior formal instruction, but in which they are provided with instructional assistance and demonstrations upon request (Learner-Controlled Instruction). / Twenty-seven high-school students participated in the experiment over a 1-month period. Students were divided into three groups based on their pre-test scores, each group was then assigned randomly to one of the three experimental conditions. The computer tutor was used as the sole source of instruction. Pre- and posttests were administered to measure the changes in students' algebraic abilities. A multivariate analysis of the pre- and posttest results indicates that overall student performance in all three conditions improved significantly over time, as measured by the ability to construct algebraic representations and the ability to made estimates using the various representations ( F (2, 23) = 46.6, p < 0.01). In particular, students in Lecture-Demonstration-Practice Condition demonstrated a higher level of accuracy (89.51%) than students in the Embedded-Teaching and Learner-Controlled Instruction did (61.1% and 63.3% respectively). Moreover, all students in Lecture-Demonstration-Practice Condition completed the posttest successfully, whereas only 56% of students in the other two conditions passed the posttest. / This research demonstrates that students learn more effectively from instruction that emphasizes the coherent representations of the symbol system of algebra. It is postulated that such coherent representations enable students to make sense of the subsequent examples to be studied and the problems to be solved thus leading to better problem-solving performance. This research has implications for the development of instructional theories and educational computer applications.