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.