MTECH IT student Khaleel Cassim has won Best Student Paper at the International Conference on Education and Information in the US…
2 December 2011
DUT Student Wins International Award
MTECH IT student Khaleel Cassim has won Best Student Paper at the International Conference on Education and Information in the US. He, together with Professor Eyono Bono who co-authored the paper, travelled to the University of California, Berkley to participate in the prestigious event.
Professor Eyono Obono and Khaleel Cassim
“This paper was written from the research findings of phase one of my work towards my Masters Degree. When I started my research my aim was to assist learners who are not motivated when it comes to problem solving and are not understood by their teachers. Through my reading I discovered that many successfully experimented technologies are not being used. I wanted to create any type of IT related intervention to help students with word problems,” said Cassim.
The topic of the research paper was “Factors affecting the adoption of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) for teaching of word problems”. It took Cassim approximately seven months to complete his research. The initial process involved designing a questionnaire, travelling to rural schools in KZN, data capturing and analysis.
Cassim said, “Research is very important and essential to the progression of our society and helps to solve some of the world’s most persistent problems and we are provided with alternatives to different situations. This award has put DUT on the map and shows the type of quality research being conducted. To win against some of the best universities in the world, I feel like I am on top of Mount Everest!”
Professor Eyono Obono said, “The main challenge was linked to the logistics of travelling across the entire KwaZulu-Natal province for data collection. Usually when I ask my students to do some work, they find it so difficult that many of them usually think that I am just trying to punish them. Hard work always pays, and only hard workers can survive in this competitive world.”
