Developing Multimedia Enhanced Content to Upgrade Subject Content Knowledge of Secondary School Teachers in Tanzania

• Published in: Journal of learning for development Vol. 2; no. 3; pp. 29 - 44
• Main Authors: Mtebe, Joel S, Kibga, Elia Y, Mwambela, Alfred A, Kissaka, Mussa M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Commonwealth of Learning 2015
• Subjects: Accuracy; Course Content; Error Correction; Foreign Countries; Grammar; Mathematics Instruction; Multimedia Materials; Pedagogical Content Knowledge; Program Descriptions; Science Instruction; Secondary School Students; Spelling; Tanzania; Tanzania
• ISSN: 2311-1550; 2311-1550

The failure rates and lack of interest amongst students in science and mathematics in secondary schools in Tanzania is a serious problem. The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoEVT) implemented a project to enhance and upgrade the pedagogical knowledge and subject content knowledge of teachers in selected difficult topics in science and mathematics in secondary education. This article reports on the process involved in the development of multimedia enhanced content that involved teachers, facilitators, and technical staff. The developed content was evaluated for its satisfaction using a sample of 72 experts that included teachers and instructors after using the content for 10 days. Generally, respondents were satisfied with the quality of the developed multimedia enhanced content. However, accuracy had a minimum percentage of users' satisfaction with 37%. This shows that the majority of the content had spelling and grammatical errors that were supposed to have been corrected before producing the final product. Although this is ongoing work, we believe that the lessons learned from our efforts can be useful to similar organizations planning to develop multimedia enhanced content for educational purposes.