Background: Over the years, mathematics and sciences have been performed poorly worldwide. There is an overwhelming high failure rates of mathematics and sciences in the marginalized schools found in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. Electronic (e)-learning tools could be promising interactive strategies for teaching mathematics and sciences. There is lack of studies documenting educational challenges in the refugee settlement, and how e-learning can address the challenges.Objective: To identify the challenges experienced in teaching and learning mathematics and sciences in schools found in Nakivale refugee settlement, and explore the potentials of using e-learning to address the identified challenges.Methods: We employed a parallel mixed methods study design that utilized focus group discussions and surveys. We purposively conducted a focus group discussion with the 17 mathematics/science teachers that we had trained (in e-learning) from 6 schools in Nakivale refugee settlement. We also administered surveys to 267 learners and mathematics/science teachers of the six participating schools.Results: Educational challenges reported by participants are: 1) lack of access to modern teaching and learning resources, 2) Leaners’ negative attitudes towards mathematics and science, 3) overwhelming number of learners in class. 4) Lack of ICT pedagogical skills. They anticipated that e-learning could potentially: 1) enable unlimited and flexible access to educational resources, and 2) enhance engagement, interest and understanding of learning concepts. They however worried about the availability of sufficient technological infrastructure (e.g. internet, computers, and electricity) and skills to use the application. Conclusion: E-learning may enable unlimited and flexible access to educational resources, and enhance engagement, interest and understanding of learning concepts, which could potentially improve performance in mathematics and sciences in otherwise marginalized schools.
Background: Globally, women’s representation in STEM fields remains significantly lower than that of men. Studies assessing the STEM gender gap in disadvantaged rural-based schools are lacking.Objective: To examine the gender differences in attitudes towards STEM and soft skills, and knowledge of role models among students of Nakivale secondary school in Nakivale refugee settlement, southwestern Uganda.Methods: We employed a cross sectional study design that administered pilot tested questionnaires to 111 secondary school students in Nakivale secondary school.Results: More girls than boys reported negative attitudes towards STEM. Both boys and girls demonstrated low attitudes towards the 21st century skills (such as goal setting, leadership skills, team work skills, time management and computer/internet skills), low intentions of pursuing STEM-related subjects in future, as well as limited exposure to STEM role models.Implication: Interventions to address girls’ negative attitudes towards STEM, improve students’ 21st century skills, develop students’ interest in STEM subjects/careers, and link students to role models are urgently needed especially in marginalized areas such as refugee settlements.
Cloud computing platforms used for research collaborations within public health domains are limited in terms of how service components are organized and provisioned. This challenge is intensified by platform level challenges of transparency, confidentiality, privacy and trust. Addressing these collaboration issues will necessitate that components are reorganized. There is a need for secure and efficient approaches of reorganizing the service components, with trust to support collaboration related requirements. Through iterative design, a reliable and trust-aware reorganization of cloud components-the Collaboration cloud architecture is achieved. We utilize SOA, Privacy-By-Design principles and insights from blockchain to enforce trust. We illustrate its potential with multi-layer security process flow based on server-to-client tokens, Role-based Access Control and the traditional authentication-username and password with assurance for privacy and trust. The architecture shows promise towards data governance and the overall management of internal or external data flows.
BACKGROUND The benefits of clouds to biomedical and health researchers especially consortia are tremendous spanning sequencing of instruments for health monitoring, image collection and archival, and analyses among others. The cloud enables On-demand access to researcher resources so that researchers can automatically consume them with minimal management effort. However, its wide adoption is staggeringly slow despite all these benefits due to a variety of challenges related to the availability and reliability of researcher applications, interoperability, ownership, security and privacy, and non-compliance to existing research regulations and laws. OBJECTIVE The main goal of this paper is to survey and map literature objectively to learn and discern what actually happens when biomedical and health research consortia activities and data are migrated onto the cloud. METHODS We investigate through literature, the application of Cloud computing paradigm within biomedical and health research, using publications from journals and scientific databases. RESULTS Findings indicate (a) a variety of biomedical and health research applications that we categorize as tools, platforms and storage archives, used for storing, enabling robust access and sharing, querying, and analyzing biomedical and health research data; (b)the paradigm’s adoption is extensive to include assistive care for elderly and the chronic, real time ECG monitoring and analysis, data management, picture archiving, and telemedicine; (c) that researchers need guidance on when to shift their endeavors to the cloud; (d) most applications are specific and limited in regards to flexibility and usability, confidentiality preservation, ownership, likelihood for collusion; (e)Data sharing and security models used by these applications have varied limitations, and their implementation requires that privacy and compliance to existing data protection regulations are observed. While resource sharing may be pivotal to biomedical consortia, utilizing the cloud for collaboration as a service requires that the service provision and consumption is complaint to the SLAs and related data protection regulations. The service is hoped that it is of high availability, scalable, secure and privacy-aware, yet biomedical and health research applications hosted for research consortia activities don’t entirely meet similar requirements CONCLUSIONS Therefore, the biomedical and health research cloud is complex with varied requirements for security and privacy, availability, scalability and trust. An attempt is proposed, “The Collab”, as a secure and a privacy-aware biomedical and health research collaboration cloud application. The Collab ensures that data under collaboration is secure, and infrastructure too, is privacy-aware, avails efficient and effective data auditing, and extended control beyond consortia boundary using a proxy-re- encryption and a 2-factor authentication. CLINICALTRIAL MUST/20/07-16
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