Use of Educational Technologies to assist Academics in their Teaching at the University of Mauritius

In the ever changing world of technology, traditional ways of doing classes have been greatly overtaken by the integration of educational technologies in the curriculum. In this digital era, with rapid technological innovations, the learning and teaching process is also changing rapidly at tertiary level. The use of educational technologies is becoming more interwoven in the fabric of academic life. Student management is becoming difficult and lecturers are facing various challenges every day. This study reflects the challenges that educators at the University of Mauritius face in their day to day lecture and investigate whether the integration of educational technologies in their curriculum can assist them in their teaching. Data was gathered through a survey where 169 students participated. Preliminary data suggests that educators cannot cope with too many students at a time and alternative methods to suppress this problem need to be catered. This study also elaborates on whether the introduction of eLearning technologies will be helpful to educators and will provide a solution to all their problems.Keywords: educational technologies, technological innovations, academic, eLearnin

A framework for safer driving in Mauritius

According to the National Transport Authority (NTA), there were 493,081 registered vehicles in Mauritius in April 2016, which represents a 1.4% annual increase compared to 2015. Despite the sensitization campaigns and the series of measures setup by the Minister of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport, the number of road accidents continues to rise. The three main elements that contribute to accidents are: road infrastructure, vehicle and driver. The driver has the highest contribution in collisions. If the driver is given the right information (e.g. driving behaviour, accident-prone areas and vehicle status) at the right time, he/she can make better driving decisions and react promptly to critical situations. This paper proposes a framework for safer driving in Mauritius that uses an on-board car diagnostic module (OBDII) to collect data such as vehicle average speed, engine revolution and acceleration. This module relays the data to a cloud environment where an adaptive algorithm analyses the data and predicts driver behaviour in real-time. Based on driving behaviour, mobile alerts can be sent to the driver in the form of messages, voice commands or beeps. A survey was also carried out to evaluate the acceptance rate of such a framework by people of different age groups in Mauritius