The Role of a Web Portal to Facilitate Higher Learning Institutions Students’ Field Attachment in Tanzania

Abstract

One of the approaches applied by Higher Learning Institutions to equip students with the practical skills is through field attachment in relevant companies based on field of studies. There are so many challenges in the process of coordination and allocation of students to relevant companies including expenses in terms of time and resources due to prolonged process involved. A web-based portal was developed to address the challenges for Tanzanian context. The development approach based on Scrum framework was employed to allow users involvement. To ensure information completeness, mixed-methods approach including key informant interviews, observations and requirements workshop were applied for portal’s requirements elicitation. The requirements determined from users were further used to guide initial interface designs which were then converted to clickable wireframe pages using pencil software. The prototype was sent to real users via email for testing and improvement suggestions before real portal development. Scrum development approach was employed where increments development progress were frequently inspected to detect undesirable variances. The portal was finally validated and tested for usability and indicated to have improved field attachment process and open doors for more collaboration between Higher Learning Institutions and companies. This study provides insight on the approach used to come up with the solution regarding current challenges. Moreover, the contribution that the research based solution has brought to the students’ field practices process is identified.