Experience with Teaching an Online Course in Mobile App Development for Senegalese Students and Professionals

Christelle Scharff, Jean-Marie Preira, El Hadji Lamine Biaye

Abstract

Online education has been described as a means to transform access to

education and increase opportunities at a global scale. In this paper, we

describe our experience with teaching an eight-week online course in mobile

app development for Senegalese students and professionals. The course

design and delivery leverage our understanding of the Senegalese context,

and emphasized direct communication and the use of peer-review practices

and professional tools such as Slack and GitHub. We focus on participants’

motivation and experience. The preliminary results we present are useful for

academic institutions, tech hubs and capacity building organizations targeting

developing markets.

Research Questions

How to teach programming / mobile app

development online in an engaging and

efficient way, adapted to developing markets?

MOOCS

Context-

adapted

courses

VERSUS

Mission: To build capacity in mobile technology and organize activities for the

wider tech community

Top 3 reasons for the participants to take part in activities: Interest in

technology, getting skills, and networking opportunities

Numbers: 131 apps developed | >500 participants (18% females) | 50 faculty

trained | >800 members in the meetups

Important fact: A pipeline that provides the best candidates for jobs in tech (e.g.,

Groupe Chaka) and tech hub incubation (e.g., Andando)

Settings and Methodology

8-week online course under the umbrella of Mobile(4)Senegal

13 participants (7 females and 6 males) | 7 students | 4 students engaged

in internships | 2 professionals

Android: Android Studio, Java, Google Maps, UI/UX, Firebase, SQLlite

Tools: Java, Codility, Android, Android Studio, Firebase, GitHub

Communications: Slack

Evaluations: 2 quizzes and programming assignments / week, peer-

review assignments, and team project

Peer-review: Testing of mobile apps by peers

Data gathering: Entry and exit survey

Findings and Future Work

Not enough exposure to mobile app development in Senegal

Understanding of the Senegalese context, use of Slack, and peer-review were

crucial for success and course completion (40% very satisfied, 60% satisfied,

100% course completion)

The team project was considered the most important learning assignment

Internet is still the most important challenge to online education in Senegal

Android Studio installation (>2 GB) and selection of Android technical

documents (mostly in English, versions) were the main technical issues

Videos should be integrated in the course

2nd course will

be offered in

summer 2017

Projects

References

Oyo, B., Kalema, B.M. Massive Open Online Courses for Africa by Africa. The International Journal of

Research in Open and Distance Learning 15, 1-13 (2014).

Madaio, M.A., Grinter, R. E., and Zegura, E. W. Experiences with MOOCs in a West-African Technology

Hub. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication

Technologies and Development (ICTD '16).

World Bank Blog. MOOCs in Africa. https://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/moocs-in-africa.

Scharff, C. Cheung, C. H., Preira, J. M. Evaluation of the Impact of a Six-year Capacity Building Initiative

on Mobile App Development in Senegal, Procedia Engineering, Volume 107, 2015, Pages 463-469.