Need for an Innovative Teaching and Learning Environment

2.4 Need for an Innovative Teaching and Learning Environment at CBE

While education entails presenting prepared notes or reproducing what is written in the textbook and making the students understand, it inspires innovation, creativity, and self-sufficiency [109]. According to Erice Group,

“innovation is … the process of trying to improve a situation by introducing something new that should potentially yield a benefit for different users regarding tangible impact at the level of society” [110]. Innovative teaching and learning methodologies involve short lectures, simulations, role-playing, portfolio development and PBL [109]. A study by Subramani and Iyappan [109] proposed a reference model of the design of an innovative learning environment (ILE), whereby the emphasis is placed on students’ access to online resources and participation through virtual learning using the concept of big data analytics.

Innovative teaching and learning are crucial undertakings which every HEI such as CBE should strive for. The world today is witnessing several innovations in different sectors for improving peoples’ lives and bringing new hope.

According to a report by UNESCO [111], the use of technology in any education sector is widely seen worldwide both as necessary and as an opportunity to foster innovative teaching. ICT usage in education promotes learning flexibly and counteracts limitations caused by differences in time of day, geographical distance, or location. It also promotes innovative educational

opportunities for a higher number of people of all ages [111]. Furthermore, as narrated by Ng’ambi et al. [112], a cloud-based ICT infrastructure used in smart way realizes “unlimited” educational resources that are freely, openly, and readily available within and beyond the institutions for both teachers and students to consume.

A necessity for innovations in the teaching and learning environment in the Tanzanian context is reflected in some of the policies and directives from the ministry responsible for education. The famous Tanzanian Education and Training Policy of 2014, for example, directs that all Tanzania HEIs both in mainland and island in Zanzibar as well as other levels of education in Tanzania should strive for innovations in the way education is delivered, assessed, and generally handled [25].

The major change in curriculum in Tanzania in 2005 was also an attempt to implement the based learning (CBL) system and competence-based curriculum (CBC) [113]. The Competence-Based Education System was introduced to empower Tanzanian learners to concentrate and develop reliable knowledge and skills that would enable them to demonstrate performance. The CBL then needed a mind shift for teachers and students to adapt to what was being advocated in the CBL, and one of the solutions to think about was innovative teaching and learning.

The CBEMET, which is narrated was designed and developed in this study, was an attempt to improve the already started innovative teaching and learning concepts at the College of Business Education. It came on the backdrop of the context that prevailed before investing in ICT and mobile technology, whereby the college faced the challenge of large classes, with up to 200 students in one class, lack of teaching aids, and inadequate resources such as books, etc. (Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3: Students crowded in a classroom at the main campus in Dar es Salaam.

Thus, while these challenges played mostly a significant role in the undermining the much-needed quality of education at CBE, the need for improving teaching and learning at CBE with available technologies arose.

The college, among other things, adopted ICT and mobile technologies to the enhancement of teaching and learning at the college. The decision was to change the teaching and learning environment at the College of Business Education. That is, teaching and learning will move from entirely face-to-face to blended learning. The transformation also involves slowly shifting the teaching from the manual presentation of teaching notes and writing on whiteboards to the online sharing of various educational resources, which are abundantly available through mobile technologies. Table 2.1 presents the differences between the situations in teaching and learning before and after the adoption of mobile technologies at this College of Business Education.

Table 2.1: Comparison between teaching and learning status before and after the adoption of mobile technologies at the College of Business Educa-tion (CBE) within the four campuses.

Teaching/Learning

Moodle Lessons prepared and accessed online at any time

Teacher-centred—relying

on teachers’ notes the CBEMET

prototype Access to shared education resources fetching own resources apart from the shared one, collaborations among students in other CBE Campuses

Teaching materials not easily shared among CBE teachers

the CBEMET

prototype Teachers’ own forum to share teaching experience and improve their teaching experiences with others accessed by all teachers.

Slow manual processing of

examination results SARIS Results processed quickly The high rate of errors

after examination results are out

SARIS Minimal errors of examination results after the results are out Manual processing

of tests, quizzes, and semester examinations causing a delay in grading

the CBEMET

prototype Online test administration (marking and monitoring), reduction of processing time with quality output

As a contribution to the initiative to foster innovative teaching and learning at CBE or in any other HEIs in Tanzania, the researcher formed an innovation group at the College of Business Education ICT department, from a group of students taking ICT courses in the department of ICT and Mathematics.

The innovation group would from time to time conduct innovation projects aimed at solving some of the challenges facing the CBE community. One of the projects was to develop an application to help the matron at CBE, who

payments, schedule cleaning timetable, and monitoring other facilities, such as medical equipment. The idea behind the innovation group projects was to let the students apply the programming skills they were learning in classes to challenges that could be innovatively solved through what they had learned in classes.

However, the successful integration of ICT and mobile technologies is considerably influenced by the competence of the main stakeholders in the education sector (i.e., students and teachers) [3]. Consequently, both teachers and students at CBE are encouraged to utilize the available mobile learning infrastructure and technologies (Table 2.1) to access, share and exchange learning-related content anytime and anywhere.

Consistent with Lubua [84], this study capitalized on the opportunities offered by mobile technologies in the education sector. This study set out to explore the integration of new digital technologies by teachers and students in Tanzanian HEIs.