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Towards Provision of Online Peer Assisted Learning: Understanding the Contemporary Participation Trends

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e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries (AFRICOMM 2021)

Abstract

Although learning materials for eLearning platforms are keenly developed, learner support has remained unreliable. Mainly, the focus has been on managing and easily delivering learning resources to learners. The aim of this study was to thoroughly analyze the participation trends of both teachers and students from one of the deployed learning management systems (LMS). To accomplish this objective, activities logfile from Halostudy LMS implemented for secondary schools in Tanzania for the period of 11 months were extracted and analyzed. The study found that learning support is not always evident as it is entirely reliant on subject teachers who were found to be not actively using the system. Drawing on reflection of this finding, this study provides analytical commentary on the consequences of relying on subject teachers for the provision of learning support. With this understanding, future work will look at the use of machine learning techniques to facilitate automatic recommendation and pairing of potential peers to students facing challenges in their learning.

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Correspondence to Henrick Mwasita .

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© 2022 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Mwasita, H., Mtebe, J.S., Mbise, M. (2022). Towards Provision of Online Peer Assisted Learning: Understanding the Contemporary Participation Trends. In: Sheikh, Y.H., Rai, I.A., Bakar, A.D. (eds) e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries. AFRICOMM 2021. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 443. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06374-9_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06374-9_33

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-06373-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-06374-9

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