The Context of Education Initiatives, Importance and Inhibitors of ICTs towards improving teaching and learning in Tanzania: A Critical Literature review

This paper provides a comprehensive review of articles related to initiatives towards integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Tanzanian education. The review summarizes the relevant research on the use of ICT in education, importance and inhibitors or challenges encountered towards improving teaching and learning from primary to higher education in the country. By having a deep understanding of the opportunities available and inhibitors of ICT towards improving learning and teaching, will be of great importance in improving the integration and utilization of ICT in the educational system in Tanzania. This review will be useful for educators, ICT policymakers and other decision makers who are directly involved in introducing ICT into education in Tanzania. In addition, the review also provides the directions for future research studies in addressing the gap between ICT and education in Tanzania. Keywords: ICT, teaching and learning; Inhibitors of ICT; Student learning, Higher Learning Institutions  (HLIs)

QoE-Centric Control and Management of Multimedia Services in Software Defined and Virtualized Networks

Multimedia services consumption has increased tremendously since the deployment of 4G/LTE networks. Mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices are expected to continue to grow with the emergence and evolution of future networks such as 5G. The end user’s demand for services with better quality from service providers has triggered a trend towards Quality of Experience (QoE) - centric network management through efficient utilization of network resources. However, existing network technologies are either unable to adapt to diverse changing network conditions or limited in available resources. This has posed challenges to service providers for provisioning of QoE-centric multimedia services. New networking solutions such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can provide better solutions in terms of QoE control and management of multimedia services in emerging and future networks. The features of SDN, such as adaptability, programmability and cost-effectiveness make it suitable for bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications such as live video streaming, 3D/HD video and video gaming. However, the delivery of multimedia services over SDN/NFV networks to achieve optimized QoE, and the overall QoE-centric network resource management remain an open question especially in the advent development of future softwarized networks. The work in this thesis intends to investigate, design and develop novel approaches for QoE-centric control and management of multimedia services (with a focus on video streaming services) over software defined and virtualized networks. First, a video quality management scheme based on the traffic intensity under Dynamic Adaptive Video Streaming over HTTP (DASH) using SDN is developed. The proposed scheme can mitigate virtual port queue congestion which may cause buffering or stalling events during video streaming, thus, reducing the video quality. A QoE-driven resource allocation mechanism is designed and developed for improving the end user’s QoE for video streaming services. The aim of this approach is to find the best combination of network node functions that can provide an optimized QoE level to end-users through network node cooperation. Furthermore, a novel QoE-centric management scheme is proposed and developed, which utilizes Multipath TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) to enhance QoE for video streaming services over SDN/NFV-based networks. The goal of this strategy is to enable service providers to route network traffic through multiple disjointed bandwidth-satisfying paths and meet specific service QoE guarantees to the end-users. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed schemes in this work improve the video quality significantly compared with the state-of-the- art approaches. The thesis further proposes the path protections and link failure-free MPTCP/SR-based architecture that increases survivability, resilience, availability and robustness of future networks. The proposed path protection and dynamic link recovery scheme achieves a minimum time to recover from a failed link and avoids link congestion in softwarized networks

QualitySDN: Improving Video Quality using MPTCP and Segment Routing in SDN/NFV

In this paper, we present a novel QoE-aware SDN/NFV system by utilizing and integrating Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) and Segment Routing (SR) paradigms. We propose a QoE-based Multipath Source Routing (QoEMuSoRo) algorithm that achieve an optimized end-to-end QoE for the end-user by forwarding MPTCP subflows using SR over SDN/NFV. We implement and validate the proposed scheme through DASH experiments using Mininet and POX controller. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we compare the performance of our QoE-aware MPTCP SDN/NFV SR-based proposal, the MPTCP and regular TCP in terms of system throughput and the end-user's QoE. Preliminary results shows that, our approach outperforms the other aforementioned methods

QoE management of multimedia streaming services in future networks : a tutorial and survey

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The use of participatory approaches in developing ICT-based systems for disseminating agricultural knowledge and information for farmers in developing countries: the case of Tanzania

The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries- EJISDC (2017) 78, 8, 1-23This paper provides an insight on the use of various participatory approaches to develop ICTs to the rural farming communities. The paper shows how collective groups of farmers can be empowered through involvement of different stakeholders in a participatory action research. The paper also discusses how participatory action research will help the farming community in adopting ICT-based solutions for agriculture. This in turn will contribute in solving problems as well as assisting decision making in identifying technological and agricultural needs. In this study, a total of 64 researchers and extension workers and 320 rural farmers were involved. Primary data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics tool. The results indicate that many ICT- based solutions for agriculture are not adopted by farmers and other stakeholders in various agricultural value chains because those ICTs were developed without using participatory approaches. Moreover, the results from study indicate that participatory action research approaches such as Participatory Communication (PV), Participatory Video (PV), Participatory Learning and Action Research (PLAR), Farmer Participatory Research (FPR), Informal-Mobile Learning Research (IMLR) have a significant impact on the effective use of ICTs in rural farming community and the agricultural domain in general. Among of these participatory approaches, the IMLR and PLAR have shown to be more effective because of availability and interactive mobile learning environments that excite interests, commitments and encourages participatory attitudes among famers and researchers. This study provides an evident that ICTs has a dominant position to alleviate rural poverty and strengthen the agriculture productivity through participatory approaches. We recommend that a strong commitment of all actors in agriculture value chain is needed so that they can collaborate to identify the problem, analysis and design possible solutions and finally, implement and later on use those developed ICTs to increase agriculture productivity

The use of participatory approaches in developing ICT-based systems for disseminating agricultural knowledge and information for farmers in developing countries: the case of Tanzania

The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries- EJISDC (2017) 78, 8, 1-23This paper provides an insight on the use of various participatory approaches to develop ICTs to the rural farming communities. The paper shows how collective groups of farmers can be empowered through involvement of different stakeholders in a participatory action research. The paper also discusses how participatory action research will help the farming community in adopting ICT-based solutions for agriculture. This in turn will contribute in solving problems as well as assisting decision making in identifying technological and agricultural needs. In this study, a total of 64 researchers and extension workers and 320 rural farmers were involved. Primary data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics tool. The results indicate that many ICT- based solutions for agriculture are not adopted by farmers and other stakeholders in various agricultural value chains because those ICTs were developed without using participatory approaches. Moreover, the results from study indicate that participatory action research approaches such as Participatory Communication (PV), Participatory Video (PV), Participatory Learning and Action Research (PLAR), Farmer Participatory Research (FPR), Informal-Mobile Learning Research (IMLR) have a significant impact on the effective use of ICTs in rural farming community and the agricultural domain in general. Among of these participatory approaches, the IMLR and PLAR have shown to be more effective because of availability and interactive mobile learning environments that excite interests, commitments and encourages participatory attitudes among famers and researchers. This study provides an evident that ICTs has a dominant position to alleviate rural poverty and strengthen the agriculture productivity through participatory approaches. We recommend that a strong commitment of all actors in agriculture value chain is needed so that they can collaborate to identify the problem, analysis and design possible solutions and finally, implement and later on use those developed ICTs to increase agriculture productivity

QoESoft:QoE management architecture for softwarized 5G networks

Abstract For 5G network softwarization, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have emerged as key technologies to enable efficient network management. 5G network virtualization will allow multiple service providers to share a single physical infrastructure offering an abstraction between the user and physical resources. As we move towards softwarized 5G networks, scalability issues, network performance with respect to Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) and QoE-aware resource management remain less studied topics. In this paper, we adopt the SDN control logic to perform an autonomic QoE-aware resource management approach in virtualized 5G networks. We propose QoESoft, a network softwarization strategy for multimedia streaming services that performs a dynamic link and switch resources management in softwarized 5G systems. With QoESoft, we aim to improve user QoE for multimedia services through efficient monitoring and adaptation of the average load of the substrate links and switches and resource costs of mapped virtual links in 5G networks. The performance of the proposed approach is analysed in testbed environments. Preliminary results indicate that, QoESoft achieves better performance than the compared baseline approach in terms of link and switch resources utilization by 78% and 70% respectively. A video reception quality ratio metric and visual inspection on the output video both confirmed significant improvements in video QoE

QoE-Aware Dynamic Resource Management in Future Softwarized and Virtualized Networks

With the advent of multimedia streaming services such as 4K/8K and extended reality, managing and optimizing multimedia service delivery to end-users remains a challenge for mobile network operators, Internet service providers, and over-the-top (OTT) providers. To solve the present concerns and challenges associated with multimedia traffic management and quality of experience (QoE) in next-generation networks, new network and service management approaches for multimedia services are required. Network softwarization and virtualization paradigms that leverage software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are considered as key technologies for network and service management in future softwarized networks. This paper adopts SDN control logic to implement a dynamic QoE-aware resource management approach in future softwarized and virtualized networks. We propose QoESoft, a QoE-aware network softwarization approach for multimedia streaming services that (a) performs a dynamic link and switch resources management, and (b) improves end-user’ QoE in softwarized systems. We introduce two important components, the QoE-sdnFlow monitor and QoE-sdnFlow manager as an extension to the SDN controller to monitor and manage the overall utilization of resources of mapped virtual links and nodes. We present a practical implementation of the QoESoft approach using a dash.js reference player where the bitrate decision adaptation logic and video segment download process are modified by introducing two components: the $BandwidthPredictor$ and the $Reporting$ functions. The $BandwidthPredictor$ component ensures that the video bitrate is selected based on the available resources on the client’s side in a dynamic manner. The $Reporting$ module provides the current streaming status of the dash.js player (e.g., stall duration, bitrate switching, startup delay, and video QoE). In addition, we present the initial evaluations of virtual network survivability and an economical analysis that maximizes the profit for OTTs/ISPs by providing better QoE to customers. The performance of the proposed approach is analyzed through extensive experiments using a Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering - Amazon Prime Video (LIVE-APV) Streaming Database running over the developed softwarized - DASH- based platform based on the Mininet and POX controller. Preliminary results indicate that QoESoft outperforms the baseline approach in terms of link resources utilization and switch resources utilization, low-live latency, startup delays, bitrate switching, stall duration and video QoE

Transforming African Education Systems in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Using ICTs: Challenges and Opportunities

This paper presents the role of ICTs in transforming Africa’s Education Systems (AES) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects/courses. The paper highlights on a positive shift across Africa in using ICT to improve the quality of teaching and learning through activities such as intensive ICT skills training to teachers, increase in ICT equipments and applications in schools, and emergence of living labs (LLs) and innovation spaces/centres (InnoSpace). We first provide some of the challenges of integrating ICTs in education followed by a description of key past and current ICT initiatives supporting the adoption of ICTs in schools using a number of case studies in sub-Saharan Africa. We further present various ICT-based models for education, as a transformational approach towards integrating ICTs in AES. Moreover, we provide various ICT platforms deployed for education service delivery in disadvantaged African society (e.g., rural areas) including LLs and InnoSpace across the continent. Finally, we highlight our main findings and observations in terms of opportunities and future ICT for education research directions in Africa. Our aim is to provide some guidelines and ensure that Africa uniformly meet the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 4, which is to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning, particularly using ICTs