On Friday 21st Feb, 2020 the Institute of Open Distance & E Learning at the College of Education, held a workshop on using emerging Technologies to innovate the teaching of History discipline in public universities in Uganda (e-History), it was held at the History Documentation Center at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences(CHUSS) Makerere University.
The training was spearheaded by a team that included Dr.Harriet Nabushawo,Prof.Paul Muyinda ,Prof. Jessica Aguti, Dr. Dorothy Ssebowa, Mr.Nicholas Tunanukye, Mr.Godfrey Mayende,Mr.Jonathan Kizito
The Head of the History Department at CHUSS Dr. Simon Peter Rutabajuuka when giving opening remarks welcomed participants to the oldest department of the University. He made mention that when he joined the University the narrative was still invention but it has since changed to innovation and that he was delighted by the timing of the project. He declared that the project started at the moment where they were in the middle of curriculum review and at time where the new secondary curriculum has just been released.
He also expressed concern about the contemporary challenges humanities are facing especially due to political influences where its debated that humanities receive enormous funding however the graduates still grapple with unemployment or when they get employed even after receiving PhDs they still get under paid.
He challenged attendees to think and re-think ways to teach History so that the knowledge the that students acquire is used to prevent re-emergence of certain events that impact society negatively and to find ways of interesting students to continue studying humanities especially History, he further went on to wish them fruitful deliberations.
Dr. Dorothy Ssebowa guided the discussion about the current trends of ICTs used in Education today; GPS, mobile phones, assistive technologies, blogs, wikis, skype, social media sites where among some that were listed, she recommended collaborative tools like wikis for example Wikipedia, that help learners and teachers to collaborate, a university wide software that checks for plagiarism was also recommended.
Prof. Jessica Aguti the Director of the institute of Open Distance and E-Learning at the College of Education assured members that the institute was willing to provide ICT assistance that is required as far as teaching the subject is concerned.
Dr. Paul Birevu Muyinda explored education in the Digital Age, he started by placing the different ages in perspective, these include; the Stone age, the Bronze age, the Iron age, the Industrial age and Digital age, each age was and is characterized by the different tools that are used and the tools determine the work method and culture.
He challenged members to tune up their teaching skills to match up with those required in the fourth industrial revolution where artificial Intelligence is becoming pervasive, he further commended the Ministry of Education for its efforts that have been propelled by inclusion of ICTs in the new secondary curriculum.
He recommended a need to transform the institutions and mindsets to the 3rd Industrial Revolution (IR) and 4th IR this will address the 21st job graduate disconnect and will enable alternative methods by redesigning spaces, collaborative working, building smart classrooms, etc
Mr. Mayende and Mr. Kizito took the participants through a hands on session on how to record videos and how to use Voki and screencast-O-Matic presentations for lecture purposes, it also involved evaluation of progress of the mobile app that is to be developed to complement teaching of the History Subject.