e-learning as a supplemental teaching tool for secondary students in Uganda: lessons from COVID-19

Introduction: Edubee, a holistic learning approach for Ugandan students is an initiative Pic-Ed. Pic-Ed is an educational company that provides digital learning materials for students, learning management systems for schools and institutions plus examination proctoring tools. The project was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of digital learning platform by Edubee in enhancing the educational level achievement of Senior three students in selected districts in Uganda. Methods: We designed a three-armed field trial which was piloted in the Central and Eastern regions of Uganda.The pilot study was conducted among Senior Three students in 12 randomly selected schools and the content was from the Senior Biology and Physics syllabus. The topics chosen for Physics were vapour pressure and heat quantities, for Biology, the topics chosen were seed dormancy, seed germination and factors affecting seed germination.The three study arms were; (A) Teacher and Edubee Platform; this arm involved the teacher explaining concepts to the students using the Edubee platform that would either be hosted in a school computer lab or would be pre-uploaded on the research team’s tablets and MP3 players, (B) Edubee only; this arm involved the students navigating the content of the Edubee platform at their pace and doing self-teaching without the aid of the teacher to). Both rural and urban districts, the students used the Edubee platform or the MP3 players and (C) Teacher only; this consisted of the teacher using the conventional syllabus notes which are in-line with the national curriculum development centre. The sample size for the study was 360 students from 12 schools in the two regions. Thirty students were randomly sampled from each school. Each of the sampled students was subjected to both a baseline and an endline assessment which were marked by experienced Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) examiners). The study was carried out in two weeks (28 th February to 10 th March 2022). Results: The total number of respondents of the study was 360 and of these, 41.6%were male and females were 58.4%. Those aged 15-16 years constituted the highest percentage at 49% and many identified with the Catholic religion at37%. Slightly above average of the participants were from the urban based schools at 59.3% and those who were in the boarding section constituted 71.6% of the total sample size. The enrolment for arm A was 33.2%, arm B (34.4%) and arm C was 32.4% of the total number of respondents. The results showed the mean performance at the endline assessment to be at 22.4%, standard deviation 7.26 and was higher than the baseline which was at 15.8%, standard deviation 12.53. On further analysis, it was noted that the odd ratio of passing an examination in arm B was 0.344 (0.173, 0.767, p= 0.006) compared to arm C 0.845 (0.4150, 1.719, p= 0.642). Factors that were associated with positive outcomes of using e-learning outcomes included; a school being located in an urban setting (p=0.002), a learner’s parent being a business person as the occupation (p=0.001), being located in Eastern region (p=0.000) and having a policy on e-learning was statistically significant during the multivariate logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: The Edubee platform is a effective learning resource for learners that should be scaled up for a longer period of time to ensure that learners master and understand the concepts better. The Edubee platform should be used as a supplementary tool where the teacher uses the audio-visual components of Edubee to enhance their explanations for science subject concepts. The stakeholders should integrate digital learning as a major component for the new national education curriculum, enact laws and pass policies on digital learning at school and national levels.