SuraYaUkimwi: Counseling sessions and external constraints

Its good to see my participation to some extent in one of the great tools that is being developed for something that will change peoples life. The chance to work with SuraYaKumwi has brought me to another level of experience to see how it can be used as a counseling tool. Three groups (each cosisting of about 10 students) from the Councelling faculty of the Tumaini University took the help of the platform to teach and counsel about the HIV/AIDS to three different schools. Me and Markus went to those sessions to assist them in a technical issues; and more important as an observer. My main objective of being there was to see how those groups will be arranging those events with the help of the tool and what feedback will be there from the students about the platform.

21^st May, 2009: Ruaha Secondary School, Ipogolo,

The first session with the school was made by group of ten students. According to them, they already had two other sessions at the school last weeks using black board and paper. They were using the tools now to put the stories as a case study to different aspects the disease and the transmission.

Location: Dinning Hall, (very big space) lots of external noise from the maintenance work being going on and also students got distracted from others coming and going out of the location very frequently.

Participants: about 150 students from form 2

Group Plan: The group were taking story of Mark as a case story. Then they ask the students to look for the questions given in the reflection sections of the tool. As a next step, the story was played and students were formed in group to discuss the questions, sometimes some part of the story were also replayed if they have any confusion. At the end, one of the student from each group were asked to put forward their thoughts about those questions to all others.

Event Log:

The event started with the introduction about the group and their purpose of being there

Then with some talk about the work they need to do and introduction to the guests,

Things that were lagging:

group did not introduce anything about the platform before they start.

What was different about this session than others?

This was a good opportunity to check the platform against the huge mass of students and random external noise at the same time. This is important because as a counseling tool, this is necessary for people in concerned stage to observe at the different settings. Also the tool will eventually be used in future in such kind of environment when it is used later as a tool for counseling purpose.

How can I improve the session next time?

• Room quite big and lots of echo: we are using computers to help students councel about some serious matter; t he information that provide utility to their life. Make sure that you only have enough enough space that you need. More space will create other disturbance and small space will create difficulty with the movement and afford.

• Sound system was not enough for the whole students to pay attention to: even if the location disadvantage barrier could be overcome with better sound system

• Picture from the projector was not clear enough to the students sitting at the back: arrangement could be made to make the room dark for the session and putting the background white for clarity.

• Disturbance due to students coming in and going out very frequently: strictly making a time for the entry of the students and asking them not to leave between session.

• Heavy noise due to hammering in the nearby maintenance room: inform the administration if there are any of such disturbances.

• Students were not clear about what activity they had to do: bearing a fact about above difficulties, it would have been better if each group were assigned one person who takes care of the discussion. This was also important in the way that although the students understand what to do, they were not able to discuss with each other (possibly due to lack of group discussion skills)

What was interesting?

One interesting point to note here was that even though we had sound and good picture used with projector, external environment played a vital role in the event; also the Animation was really attracting the attention of the students and sound is enabling them to discuss with the peers.

SuraYaUkimwi: interface and cultural tests

Iringa Girls:

Observations:

• Out of 10 participant groups, 5 started the tool with the information slides.

• It was observed that some of them had a difficulty with information mode only with going back to previous page (confused with the use of X button)

• Some of the participants who were not used to with the computers were using the right click buttons on the mouse.

Feedback:

• Pictures need to be realistic, for example the university student must be wearing smart dress, must not be wearing funny cap when the person is in tie, the dress

• When a person is infected or dying, his/her health must be seen as if it is so, for example he is lean, thin, with rashes and must be seen ugly in the picture.

• It was suggested that there must be some way of indication about the start and end of the conversation would be provided. Too many information at the same time can be sometimes a bit of problem with the reader. One possible suggestion was to put text at first and then the pictures. And some more additional work needed to be done with the bubble and texts.

Suggestions:

• Improve the Swahili language in the texts. (Grammar and more suitable words)

• In the HIV/AIDS statistics, there is a mistake with the percentage of infection in Zanzibar as 0,7% (it is supposed to be 0.7%?)

• Side text (information tab) can be put horizontal at the bottom reducing the size of the logo. This will have more space for the pictures.

Cultural Aspects: another new excerpts.

Event: 4^th testing of tool SuraYaUkimwi with a secondary level school children at Iringa Girls.

Date: 7^th May,2009.

Session title: Testing SuraYaUkimwi to ‘A’ level students at Iringa Girls

Participants: 29 ‘A’ Level students divided into 10 groups.

Mr Loupenza informed about the popularity of the test session going on in their school and there are lots of students who want to participate and volunteer in what they called “teaching class of computer”. I was given three days (tuesday, thursday and friday) suitable for them. Tuesday I had a class on Tumaini so could not possibly make it so I inform him that I will be there on Thursday (I was leaving for a trip on Friday early morning).

On Thurday, 7^th May, I reached computer lab and was really amazed to see so many number of students at the same session as compared to previous ones. There were 29 students (3 of them were from previous sessions) all from the ‘A’ level and they were eagerly waiting for the session to start. Most of them already heard from their friends who have participated in other sessions and knew what they were supposed to do before I gave instructions. At first it was bit of difficult with finding enough space for such large number of students accommodating and the place was much crowded.

Observations:

• Starting a program was a main issue in this session of testing. Most of them were struggling with how to start the program. Some of them had a program started but even did not noticed as they were also using some other programs and our tool was not visible. It would be useful to start program in full-screen mode and also run in front of any other running windows.

• 4 out of 10 groups started with the information section and when asked didn’t knew whether it contains stories as well and felt difficult to go back (needed some additional work on how to get them back to the place they were before).

• 6 groups didn’t knew that there is an English version of the text along with Swahili. (need some highlight features to indicate this)

• 2 groups were struggling with the information; when shown how to go back, they again found difficult to go back to main menus and were trying to use “back” button rather than the “start” button

Suggestions:

• 2 other groups didnt liked the placement and shape of next and previous button told that they were struggling with them for some time until they really get the idea of their use.

• Horizon in the sky are usually white(or light blue), but not dark blue.

• One of the important issues raised was with the idea of making characters similar in all pictures. Some of the places the person was difficult to identify and same person was presented differently (eg, character Mark)

• No reaction of feeling pain (eg Mina beaten by her step mother)

• 18 participants didnt liked the idea of showing breast and other parts of women. They think it is against the culture and thus strictly not suitable for children to show in schools. There was a deep discussion about the issue and it was eventually advised that the best way to show a couple in bed is their clothes lying around in bed in floor.

• There is no culture in Tanzania for girls to go to parents for talking about the marriage with the boys family. Boys are responsible to do that, except that they have finished the university (but not at least when they are in A level).

• No one in the session were clear about how Rahema got HIV in the story.

• Finally there were lots of suggestions about the necessity of improving the language used.

How it could the session be improved?

inform in advance to the concern people about the number of participants required so that I will prepare small questionnaire enough for all of them. Because of more number of students, I was not able to cover all of the students view individually. Also if there are more number of students, most of them were not able to use the tool by themselves and could not get their own hands on the tool. It is found that sound are really making difference in the way students were reacting and giving feedback on different aspects of the tool. It was taking them more deep onto the issues that students without sound were not able to go through it and find out about those aspects.

What was this session intended to achieve?

When a work is being done by people who have never been to the culture that he/she is working on, the gap between the developer and the real user is not only the case of being expert and novice but also difference between the cultural traditions the both of them belong to. The basic idea behind this session was to study the coverage of the different cultural aspects and the student view about the material covered in the tool.

Why did I attend the session?

See particular research log (requires login) for this.