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.

SuraYaUkimwi: difficulty starting and feedbacks

Ruaha Secondary School (20th April)

On Wednesday 15th April me and Markus visited the secondary school, located in Ipogolo 5 km from Iringa and met with the Principal, Mwageni (Student Counselor) and Grace (IT-lab responsible) and Silas(IT staff). Principle welcomed us and said we were allowed to conduct test sessions at the Computer Lab. Mwageni promised to organize a group of 10 students. We said any students could join only preference was not to be first year(grade) students. Grace suggested Mondays or Tuesdays for the test sessions. We decided to have first session Monday 20th. Today at lunch time I called Mwageni and no group was yet organized but he promised to organize a group. When we arrived at 15:30 half of the group organized had to be excused due to other obligations at the school. We briefly met with the five students and asked if they could find five more students to join. Grace and Silas in the beginning raised concerns that they would like to leave at already at 4 and someone needed to be present and also lock the lab after we were done with our work. Grace made an exception for this time but told that there will be a problem for coming sessions. I suggested that any of the volunteers at the school could stay and lock but Grace did not seem to like that solution. Marcus is thinking maybe we can ask how much she would charge for extra time for next sessions??

Finally at appr. 16:00 students had got organized and we started with 9 students that soon had expanded to 12 (5boys and 7girls) all in form four(Grade-4). We introduced ourselves and explained our objectives and that we are in need of the students’ feedback on the material that we have prepared. 12 Cd's had been prepared with the material, of which one was given to Mwageni, one to Grace the remaining 10 was distributed to the students. We began by asking students to find a computer and trying to open the material by themselves. To our surprise only one computer had a functional CD-player. We then tried placing material on server so that it could be accessed from other computers and eventually two more computers could view the material. With the use of My and Markus’s laptop we had a total of 5 computers for them where 3 of them had sound.

All the technical problems made it difficult to get a good idea of how easy they found the material to use but it was observed that all the groups got a hang on how to navigate the stories and extra material quite easy without the need of asking for assistance. When questioning them about the user friendliness they all claimed that it was easy to use and user friendly interface. I made several attempts to get feedback on what might not have been so intuitive but they all answered it was easy and no problems.

On the material itself there was several comments:

1. Limitations in additional material, the risk of transmission while in accident where you might get someone’s blood on your wounds. The importance not only about education as pointed out that different education needed for different ages as some things could be harmful knowledge for younger students

2. Why not making use of video and making material available on more accessible VHS video format as few students have access to computers, students also welcomed printed materials. The VHS option they suggested were for the one who might not have access to computers.

3. Some found cartoons to static and said it is a bit boring

4. Requested more and better animations and to make people walking properly and to make mouth move while they speak, to make them look more alive.

5. Speech bubbles not synchronized enough but students found them important and wanted to see more speech bubbles in the material. They also pointed out the importance for deaf people. (Or when no sound)

6. In Kisamvu story there is apparently some problem with voices telling something about the mothers asking her husband to inform relatives while already in funeral, which was found a bit strange

7. Concerns about breasts showing which was not considered appropriate by some

8. The use of Swahili and English was considered very good but they also wanted to have English voice available for foreign students and to follow school principles of the use of English

9. The stories were found very practical and look relevant and easy to relate to by the students they did not find material foreign or out of context

10. Sounds were considered excellent and they enjoyed that there was also some singing.

11. Some of the students did not like the idea of cartoons because they think they are not small enough to watch cartoon characters and would have been better if the real people were involved in making the stories.

12. There were also some comments about the presented stories being very summarized, and things were happening too fast.

13. Some of them suggested that the story should go automatic, ie stories coming one after another without doing anything.

14. The suggestions were made to synchronize the sound with picture.

15. There is a necessity to improve the pictures.

16. Most of the picture did not had the feeling in what the actions were being done. For example, in Mina's Story, she was being beaten but there were no expressions of being in pain.

17. More story for other causes(other than sexual intercourse) of the HIV disease were found necessary.

18. Most of the story presented a risk factor focused on males and there was a necessity to provide suggestions to avoid the contamination.

19. There was a bit of discussion about the speech bubbles. Some of them thought that there should be a lot of speech bubbles with all the things said in dialog while some of them thinks they were too many of them already.

20. At last, they were asked “If you are given this material and asked to provide education to the other students about HIV/AIDS, do you think you can do that? Why?”. Most of them were very positive that they can definitely go easily with them and the reason was that most of the stories were very simple and practical to say that these could happen easily to them as well.

After about an hour of going through material we had approximately a 15 min discussion about the material

SuraYaUkimwi: Iringa Girls and information sections

Second Session with the Iringa Girls:

Participants: 13 students from 'O' level distributed across the 9 computers.

Observations: Students who don't have much knowledge about the computers started with the information section and got stuck with how to get back. Most of them thought it only contained information.

Questions Raised:

• Does AIDS always get infected into person when they have wounds in the sexual parts?(in ABC)

Suggestions:

• When a doctor is telling about a person getting infected, they did not give any counsellings or advice and the boy don't have any feeling of being surprised in the speech.

• There are only condoms used by males. It would be good to have some stories that shows the use of female contraceptives.

• In Meena story, the story says that she went to the village to her relatives, but then it shows that she is dancing in disco the next moment and with modern dress (and dancing with boys). We don't have any villages in Tanzania with such discos in villages.

• People getting sick but not shown (except in one stories)

• Use of real person rather than cartoon (but clarified with the fact that they are not suitable for Internet versions)

• In questions for reflection, there is a mistake like:

  • unawe zakuhr : unaweza kuhu

  • ungefanga je : ungefanyaje