Towards Developing Interactive Content for Enhancing Life Skills Education in Tanzania: Possibilities and Pitfalls

摘要

Feasibility study is the first and important stage in any planning of introducing a new solution for overcoming existing challenges. It saves a lot of resources that could be lost if such solution fails to solve the intended problem. On the other hand, it gives a proper way to go ahead with the plan of introducing the solution. The purpose of this study is to establish necessary and basic requirements as possibilities and pitfalls for deploying cost effective interactive multimedia content for enhancing an ineffective provision life skills education at primary school level in Tanzania. Ten primary schools were randomly selected and surveyed from which 65 teachers and 407 pupils participated in the study. Questionnaires, interviews, and documentary reviews were used as data collection tools. It was found that the Internet penetration is 45% of the population with 82.6% of Internet users are smartphones users. Number of computers and tablets at schools are still limited to 1:1036 computer pupils ratio, 96% of pupils had access of computers and smartphones from parents. Moreover, 77% of teachers used conventional and lecturing style in teaching, 100% of life skills content was static found in inadequate textbooks. Based on these results, deployment of self-learning enabled interactive multimedia content is possible and will bring positive impact if it will be developed to operate in ICT devices available in both primary schools and pupils' parents as well. This study informs the proper way of introducing cost-effective interactive multimedia content at primary school level in Tanzania.