James Etim

An Evidence Based Learning and Teaching Strategy for Computer Science Classrooms and Its Extension into a Mobile Classroom Response System

Evidence-based instructional practices were incorporated in class, which gave immediate indication on students problem solving skills and class participation information. This pedagogy showed positive results and broader acceptance by students in several semesters of intervention. Significant usage of mobile devices during class motivates the extension of this pedagogical approach of asynchronous problem solving using mobile devices. We believe that use of such devices in the classroom for solving interactive problems will enhance students abilities to solve problems by using their preferred interaction mode. This paper presents the results of the evidence based pedagogy and development of a mobile classroom response system that extends this pedagogy to help student solve interactive problems in their mobile devices to improve their class engagement and problem solving skills.

Using Interactive Exercise in Mobile Devices to Support Evidence-based Teaching and Learning

To improve students class experience, the use of mobile devices has been steadily increasing. However, such use of mobile learning environments in the class is mostly static in nature through content delivery or multiple choice and true/false quiz taking. In CS courses, we need learning environments where students can interact with the problem in a hands-on-approach and instructor can assess their learning skills in real-time with problems having different degree of difficulty. To facilitate such interactive problem solving and real-time assessment using mobile devices, a comprehensive backend system is necessary. This paper presents one such system, named Mobile Response System (MRS) software, associated interactive problem-solving activities, and lessons learned by using it in the CS classrooms. MRS provides instructor with the opportunity of evidence-based teaching by allowing students to perform interactive exercises in their mobile devices with different learning outcomes and by getting an instant feedback on their performance and mental models. MRS is easy-to-use, extensible and can render interactive exercises developed by third-party developers. The student performance data shows its effectiveness in increasing student understanding of difficult concepts and the overall perception of using the software was very positive.

Gender parity and educational development in Nigeria: an analysis of recent trends

Education is a vehicle for social change and has been linked to development. One of the goals in Education for All is the elimination of gender disparities in education by 2015. In light of EFA Goal 3, several questions were raised with regards to education in Nigeria including: 1) whether there are gender disparities in primary school enrolment; 2) whether there are gender disparities in enrolment in secondary education; 3) whether there are gender differences in terms of student performance at the end of secondary education. The primary source of data was the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics. It was found that although there was progress during the years in the study, gender disparity in favour of male students still remained. Some suggestions were made on strategies to improve the situation.

MRS: Automated Assessment of Interactive Classroom Exercises

Classroom formative assessment augmented with timely and frequent feedback has become one of the most prominent teaching practices in education research. On the context of Computer Science (CS) courses that expose students to the functionality and dynamic aspects of various algorithms, traditionally, students are evaluated by exploring in-class paper-based exercises. In these exercises, they simulate the steps of an algorithm by drawing several instances of a diagram. This traditional approach is time consuming, is inherently difficult for students to express the dynamics of an algorithm, does not allow timely feedback, and restricts the number of exercises that students can practice and receive feedback on. Mobile Response System (MRS) is a software environment that facilitates in-class exercises and their real-time assessment using mobile devices and therefore focuses on addressing many of the above-mentioned problems. In this paper, we present results of eight semester-long studies using MRS in two of the required CS courses at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU). Our experimental evaluation shows the educational benefits of the proposed approach in terms of enhanced student retention of covered concepts, reduced failing rate, and increased student engagement and satisfaction.

Women and Society in Female Authored Short Stories and Poems From Namibia

In Africana women’s literary criticism, there has been a lot written on whether women literary critics hold to the feminist, African feminist or womanist point of view (Etim, 2000a, pp. 71–72; Ogunyemi, 1993). There has also been the question of whether African female writers write from the feminist or womanist perspective.

Women, Education and Sustainable Development in Sudan

In 2002, the United National General Assembly through Resolution 57/254 established the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development for the years 2005–2014. According to UNESCO’s UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (n.d.) “Education for sustainable development is everyone’s business”.