28:T4c4,

Early literacy development is crucial for academic success, yet the COVID-19 pandemic has widened pre-existing educational gaps, particularly affecting students from low-income households through uneven access to quality remote instruction and learning technology. While educational technology offers promising solutions for personalized learning, many digital tools lack robust evidence of effectiveness. This paper reports a quasi-experimental study investigating the impact of My Reading Academy, an adaptive, game-based literacy program, on early reading skills in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students. The study involved 1,092 students (402 treatment, 690 comparison) across 14 schools, using propensity score weighting and hierarchical linear models to analyze program impact. Results showed significant gains in literacy skills among kindergarten students using My Reading Academy, particularly in alphabet knowledge. Pre-kindergarten students who mastered more than half of the alphabet knowledge content in the program showed enhanced performance compared to peers. Teachers reported the program effectively supported personalized instruction and classroom equity.

29:T528,

This study shed light on the obstacles to the effective integration of technologies for teaching and learning (TTL) from the opinions of 192 respondents who are in Tanzanian universities. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and Linear regression analysis were performed to reveal out the relationship between technological-pedagogical challenges and use of TTL when controlled for related confounding variables. The key ideas from the interview data were paraphrased without including poignant quotations to support the discussion arguments. The results indicate that the inability to select suitable technology based on the learning needs and lack of TTL-pedagogy support for teachers are significant major challenges negatively associated with use of TTL. Both factors were revealed to lower the use of TTL among academic staff. Thus, the study recommends tremendous organizational support for enhancing the pedagogical technological knowledge interventions through Training Need Assessment (TNA) on TTL among academics. Hence, that should be opted prior to any TTL training/workshop. This study intends to accelerate strategies towards enhancing and transforming the current institutional culture regarding the effective utilisation of teaching and learning technologies among instructors of Tanzanian universities.

2a:T431,

As distance learning is a broadening mode in education, students have new roles: they are responsible for arranging their surroundings so that it supports learning appropriately. Eventually, teachers and educational institutes have a decreasing role as facilitators of physical learning surroundings. In this paper, we examine how students experience the impact of contextual factors in their everyday lives in distance learning settings. The flora, fauna and good weather emerged from the data as the characteristics of contextual features in distance learning. Our framework of the contextual reality is derived from the findings of a survey (n = 93) conducted in a higher educational institution. The results deliver contextual factors which have an impact on learning experience: environmental, personal, social, task, spatiotemporal change, device, service, access network, and time. Considering the ambivalent characteristics, we offer viewpoints to incorporate contextual factors for the technical and pedagogical development of distance learning systems.

2b:T5f5,