Towards a Model of E-Learning in Nigerian Higher Institutions: An Evolutionary Software Modelling Approach

This paper presents an ongoing study on the development of an e-learning scheme in a particular higher institution in Nigeria. E-learning is an evolving technology that has become a new paradigm for delivering online and distance learning programmes to users. However, the strength of recent e-learning systems lies in the emergence of Web 2.0 tools which have influenced e-learning systems in terms of pedagogy and delivery. We introduce an evolutionary software modelling in developing an e-learning platform. The paper argues that rather than developing a model with distinct phases and components that make it difficult to respond to changing users requirements, the development should be broken down into increments with required users' priority for later increments. This approach further increase efficiency and flexibility of the development as well as quality and reusability of the results. We conclude that if the scheme is fully integrated, limitations of the traditional system of learning will be eradicated in the institution of our case study and other institutions interested in adopting the scheme. Keywords: E-learning, Evolutionary modelling, Polytechnics education, Web tool

A HINDU-ARABIC TO HAUSA NUMBER TRANSCRIPTION SYSTEM

The invention of the numeration system is regarded as one of man's great accomplishments. It greatly helps man express his communication needs and serves as an important tool in language pedagogy, historical linguistics, comparative study of African languages, and computational linguistics. However, the numeral system is reported to be an endangered area being identified in the use and study of language, and in no distant time, the traditional number system of the African indigenous counting systems may lose its contact with the new generation. This paper presents a Hindu-Arabic to Hausa number transcription system. Secondary data used was sourced from literature. Context-Free Grammar (CFG) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) was used to design the system. The system designed was implemented using the Python programming language. Mean Opinion Score (MOS) evaluation approach was used to evaluate the implemented system. The result of the evaluation on Numbers with Single Representations (NSR), and Numbers with Multiple Representations (NMR) is based on three (3) metrics: syllable accuracy, orthography accuracy and syntax accuracy. The experimental respondents', system developed, and human expert average scores on NSR were respectively 0%, 100% and 100% for syllable accuracy, 40.1%, 100% and 100% for orthography accuracy, and 62.8%, 100% and 100% for syntax accuracy. Similarly, the experimental respondents', system developed, and human expert average scores on NMR were respectively 0%, 100% and 100% for syllable accuracy, 21.4%, 100% and 100% for orthography accuracy, and 31.7%, 100% and 100% for syntax accuracy. The system is capable of transcribing cardinal numbers, 1 to 1-billion, and the expert response confirmed its accuracy. The study concluded that among others, the developed system is of great importance in the teaching and learning of the traditional Hausa counting system. Future work on contextual Hausa numeral system analysis is recommended

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Development of a Prepositional Phrase Machine Translation System

Abstract The study reported in this paper considered English to Yorùbá machine translation system for prepositional phrase. The prepositional phrase machine translation system is a subset of English to Yorùbá machine translation (EYMT) system. There are issues to address in English to Yorùbá machine translation system. Some of these issues are: serial verb, split verbs, noun phrase, verb phrase, numerals and prepositional phrase to mention few. The prepositional phrase (PP) plays a significant role in EYMT system because it describes the object position in a sentence. The two languages are subject verb object (SVO). In some sentences PP can be in subject and object positions. The object position was considered in the study reported in this paper. The theoretical framework was considered first. Therein the structure of PP was x-rayed and the translation process was modelled and designed. The UML was used to design the system. The flowchart, sequence, use case, and class diagrams were designed using the UML. A bilingual database (lexicon) was built to store words from the source language (English) and its equivalent target language (Yorùbá), and the system translation process model was implemented using the Java programming language. The developed system was tested and the sample outputs were compared with the Yorùbá Google translator outputs. The system performed better than the Yorùbá Google translator in terms of good orthography and syntax

YorAA: An Authorship Attribution of Yorùbá Texts

The process of establishing the most likely author of a collection of texts or documents whose authorship must be verified is known as authorship attribution. Several studies have been reported in the literature on the task, but rarely any reported work on Yorùbá language texts. In this paper, the development of an automatic Yorùbá written texts authorship attribution system (YorAA) is reported. The literary works of six Yorùbá authors were considered. Stylometry features were extracted from the texts using the BoW approach and lexical/syntactic word frequencies approach. The Support Vector Machine, Multilayer Perceptron and Random Forest algorithms were used for the classification analysis. The experimental results showed that the developed YorAA system achieved accuracy, recall, precision and F1 measures values of 95%, 83%, 84% and 84% respectively on the average, for all the six authors. The results demonstrate that with a database of written texts in Yorùbá language, that is enough to extract relevant stylometry ´ features of the author and appropriate methods and tools applied to such features; the authorship of the texts can be identified or verified