Building capacity: challenges and opportunities in large class pedagogy (LCP) in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the past 20 years most countries, particularly developing countries, have seen a large increase in the number of students seeking higher education. A consequence of this growth is increasing pressure on teaching staff and institutions, usually resulting in, among other effects, increased class size. Large classes of between 300 and 1,000, and even more, at the undergraduate level are not uncommon in a number of countries (Mulryan-Kyne in Teach High Educ 15(2):175–185, 2010). Large classes are often perceived as one of the major obstacles to the attainment of quality education. Despite the difficulties associated with teaching and learning in large classes, they remain a reality in many countries affecting learners across all levels of the education system and are often the only perceived option available to meet growing demand for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mohamedbhai in The effects of massification on higher education in Africa. Report from the Working Group on Higher Education of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, 2008). We contend that the challenges of delivering large classes can be confronted, and in many ways diminished, through the use of current and emerging technologies and enhanced faculty development. In this expository paper, we present findings from project activities focused on higher education faculty development and capacity building. The findings include both formative and summative development activities, as well as data collected in faculty professional development workshops and the results of two surveys. We use these data to lay out issues, challenges (e.g., skills, resources, logistics—including poor campus infrastructure), and opportunities (e.g., mobile capacity, distance tools such as Moodle) of large class pedagogy using a design-based research framework.     

A flow-map method of representing cognitive structure based on respondents' narrative using science content

Increasing interest in science education research has focused on ways of representing cognitive structure in graphical and quantitative terms. A method is presented for displaying the sequential and multirelational ideation of scientific narrative elicited from respondents. The flow map provides a figural representation of the flow of information, the points in the flow where multirelational and recurrent linkages are made, and the time required to retrieve and express the information at major intervals in the sequence and in total. In keeping with constructivist models of information analysis, the elicitation of responses requires minimal intervention by the interviewer, and flow-map representation requires low inference for its construction, providing a convenient diagram of the sequential and multirelational thought patterns expressed by the respondent. The method is illustrated by analyzing interviews from students varying in academic achievement under two interview conditions that varied in emphasis on recall of multiple relationships. The illustrative data show that students of increasing academic ability produce flow maps of more complex patterns with more cross-relational linkages. These kinds of linkages, on the whole, increase with increased emphasis in the interview on recall of relationships.     

Asymptotic behavior of solutions of some semilinear functional differential and integro-differential equations with infinite delay in Banach spaces

We prove in this paper the existence and uniqueness of mild solutions to some functional differential and functional integro-differential equations with infinite delay in Banach spaces which approach almost automorphic functions at infinity. We also discuss the existence of S-asymptotically $\omega \text{-}\mathrm{periodic}$ mild solutions. The results are new.