Nomusa Dlodlo | Rhodes University (original) (raw)

Papers by Nomusa Dlodlo

IEEE Conference Proceedings, 2017

Energy demand in South Africa is fast exceeding supply, leading to instances of load shedding and... more Energy demand in South Africa is fast exceeding supply, leading to instances of load shedding and high prices. An optimized energy supply environment has to be achieved if the country is to maintain reasonable pricing and universal access to energy for the majority of the population. This research showcases the adoption of the internet of things technologies in the management of energy and specifically the smart grid. The research focuses on the design of an architecture of a national smart grid that integrates distributed renewable and non-renewable energy sources in an effort to overcome the challenge of pricing of energy for the South African consumers. The research analyses literature on existing smart grid systems and the South African national grid environment and draws lessons from the analysis that input the architecture design. When completed this system will enable the national grid to tap into distributed energy resources and also allow homes not only to connect to the national grid but also to connect to renewable energy sources and store energy on batteries. Excess energy from each home, if any, is sold to the utility company. The utility companies have the ability to compare supply and demand and determine the prices for the period which is then communicated to the consumers.

This study investigated the usage pattern of mobile devices among high school teachers in the Osh... more This study investigated the usage pattern of mobile devices among high school teachers in the Oshana and Oshikoto regions of Namibia. The sample for this study consisted of one hundred and eighty (180) high school teachers from the two regions selected from three (3) high schools from each region. A mixed method approach, comprising a baseline survey questions and interviews with randomly sampled teachers from the high schools was undertaken and the result was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). The findings among others indicated that since teachers are already using mobile devices for educational and non-educational purposes, mobile learning technology can be adopted in Namibian high schools.

Cloud computing is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that delivers services throu... more Cloud computing is an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that delivers services through the connection of Internet. The concept of discovering, brokering, selection and reliability is important. Cloud computing has emerged as an important new field, distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale resource sharing and delivery , innovative applications. This paper builds an architecture that can be used for the selection of services on the cloud. Since South African Government has prioritised entrepreneurship and the advancement of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) as the catalyst to achieving economic growth and development. Hence we are using SMMEs as an application domain for service selection. In service oriented environments service composition is necessitated by the fact that in such environments, there may be no single service that meets the required functionality and the fact that a combination may need less investment c...

HIGHER EDUCATOR-An International Journal, 2017

Although the National ICT Policy for Education in Namibia was adopted in 2005, immediately follow... more Although the National ICT Policy for Education in Namibia was adopted in 2005, immediately followed by the National ICT Policy Implementation Plan in 2006, no known studies have been undertaken so far to evaluate its implementation. This has made it difficult to ascertain the ICT/mobile learning readiness of teachers and learners. This study analyzed the perceptions of learners and teachers towards mobile learning in Namibian High Schools. A mixed method approach, comprising a baseline survey and interviews with randomly sampled learners and teachers from three high schools in the Hardap region of Namibia was undertaken. Both qualitative and quantitative data was solicited on learner and teacher perceptions on mobile learning. The survey questionnaire, which was based on modified version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to make the questions suitable to the context of mobile learning was used. Unstructured interviews were used to supplement the questionnaire where gaps were identified. The data collected was then analyzed for descriptive and inferential statistics using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).The results among others showed that even though that majority of teachers and learners in Namibia own mobile devices which can be used for mobile learning, introduction of mobile technology in schools would only work in an environment where there is a sound ICT infrastructure. Affordable internet access and skilled ICT teachers are also a challenge.

Technology in Society, 2017

2017 IST-Africa Week Conference (IST-Africa), 2017

This research is aimed at understanding and measuring students' perceptions towards the adopt... more This research is aimed at understanding and measuring students' perceptions towards the adoption of mobile learning in Namibian high schools. This paper shows the results of a survey of ninety (90) high school learners in the Otjozondjupa region of Namibia drawn from three high schools about their perceptions on the use of mobile technology. The study used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) constructs to conduct its qualitative analysis. The findings show that the students have positive perceptions on the adoption of mobile learning. The majority of learners can access the internet through mobile phones. Learners are ready to use mobile devices for academic purposes, download educational materials, use mobile devices as calculators and search for definitions of words. Mobile device usage will increase learners' engagement and group discussions. Learners have the intention to use mobile devices to facilitate learning, enhance learning and practice flexible learning.

Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, Nov 1, 2017

The acquisition of health information systems (HIS) by the Ministry of Health and Social Services... more The acquisition of health information systems (HIS) by the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) in Namibia has been uncoordinated, thereby resulting in fragmented silo systems and a lot of duplication of functionality across departments. Integration of ISs is required to provide consistent information support throughout the health sector. The aim of this paper is to assess the level of integration of IS in the Namibian health sector. The question therefore would be, "What is the current level of integration of HIS in the Namibian health sector and what are the factors that influence their level of integration" The study adopts a qualitative research strategy through a case study of MoHSS departments. The case study research design was selected to focus on three MoHSS Electronic Records Management (ERM) systems, the DHIS2, EPI INFO and eHealth. A critical analysis of related IS integration literature was conducted, which fed into interview questions on the status of HIS integration in Namibia. Three categories of semi-structured interviews were performed-one with the information technology (IT) experts, one with the systems users who are the nurses and the doctors and the last with health policy experts. The interviewees were expected to have worked in one of the Ministry's departments for at least 3 years. The interview sample consisted of four systems analysts, two systems administrators, two computer technicians, one intern, two doctors, 30 nurses and 1 Deputy Director of IT. Interviews were recorded and later transcribed for data analysis. The conclusion reached by this research was that although efforts have been initiated towards the integration of HIS in Namibia, a lot of ground is yet to be covered.

Due to technological advancement across the globe, there is a need to use information and communi... more Due to technological advancement across the globe, there is a need to use information and communication technology to provide healthcare services especially to people in the remote and rural areas of Namibia. There is inequality with regards to health service delivery in rural areas in Namibia. People in the rural areas do not have easy healthcare access as the nearest health clinics are manned by nurses as there is a shortage of doctors. This means that the mobile doctors do not visit these clinics frequently. This study focuses on how to bridge the gap of an inadequate supply of medical doctors in rural and remote areas through the use of a mobile application for remote telehealth consultation. Telemedicine/telehealth is referred to as the use of information and telecommunication technology to provide healthcare services to patients outside the traditional doctors’ consultation rooms. The term telemedicine and telehealth are often used interchangeably. The aim of this research is ...

The present generation of students entering the higher education institutions are “digital native... more The present generation of students entering the higher education institutions are “digital natives”, raised in a techno-centric world where present technologies play an essential role in human life and where innovations are absorbed and adopted quickly. Technology has emerged with various tools such as social media tools which have become pervasive to the extent that students and instructors in higher education use them all the time either for academic purposes or for personal use. Among these social media tools, the most popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn and WhatsApp messenger. The purpose of this study will be to investigate the use of social media as a learning and teaching tool in the higher education context of a developing African country of Namibia. The top three institutions namely the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the International University of Management (IUM) will be used for this stud...

2019 Open Innovations (OI), 2019

Health is the biggest challenge to a majority of citizens regardless of age group and with the sh... more Health is the biggest challenge to a majority of citizens regardless of age group and with the shortage of major components in the healthcare sector, life expectancy tends to reduce due to a lack of facilities. Technology on the other hand is reaching out to meet some of the demands that the healthcare will continuously require in order to deliver their services on time. One such technology is known as the internet of things (IoT). IoT has already proven its great potential towards the healthcare domain. IoT has the ability to allow patients to be monitored from the comfort of their homes through sensors equipped within devices deployed to perform specific tasks. The other technology is none other than the Blockchain which was introduced to deliver its capabilities in the financial ledger. The Blockchain helps to keep track of all the transactions being recorded, which in healthcare sector the need for Blockchain can be transformed to keep a trace of patient records. Since the IoT devices have the capability to monitor vital signs in the human body, it will be of a great achievement to integrate it with the Blockchain to keep an efficient system of healthcare records. The approach of this work is presented based on an Blockchained-IoT system to improve challenges of storing patients’ data captured by wearable IoT devices to help medical caregivers to make more informed decisions based on the efficient healthcare record-keeping. The design science approach will be proposed in our research to run the full experiment of our work.

OIL AND GAS ENGINEERING (OGE-2021), 2021

The functioning of a smart city relies upon six key factors, which are smart governance, environm... more The functioning of a smart city relies upon six key factors, which are smart governance, environment, living, people and mobility. This paper focuses on the smart mobility factor, within the context of a smart university which is a surrogate of a smart city. A proof of concept transport system will be developed. The transport system will consist of a third-generation bicycle-sharing platform, which will explore the usage of several technology paradigms such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology. The transportation system will consist of a permissioned Proof Of Authority (POA) blockchain network of docking stations, which users of the smart university campus will interact with through a mobile application to rent and dock bicycles.

2018 Open Innovations Conference (OI), 2018

There are a number of existing frameworks for recommendation systems that have been identified in... more There are a number of existing frameworks for recommendation systems that have been identified in domains such as e-commerce and tourism. The aspects of user profiles, adaptation and group models from the e-commerce and tourism frameworks can be applied to education provided they are customised through incorporating principles of pedagogy such as behavioural theories. Recommendation systems can be adopted to support personalised / differentiated teaching and learning. The aim of this research is to develop an adaptive recommender-systems-based framework for differentiated teaching and learning on eLearning platforms, that is, learning management systems (LMS). Through a literature review, 40 attributes of personalized learning were identified. The Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MUAT) was used to identify the 10 top attributes to go in as personalized learning framework components. From a population of 1203 students from College X, a sample of 200 students was purposively selected for the research on the basis of their familiarity with College X's eLearning system. 103 students responded to the questionnaire, representing a response rate of 52%. From the responses of the students, the following top ten (10) attributes were identified for inclusion in the personalised learning platforms: culture, emotional/mental state, socialisation, motivation, learning preferences, prior knowledge, educational background, learning/cognitive style, and navigation and learning goals. A theory-driven adaptive recommender-based framework was derived from a combination of literature review and the attributes derived from the research.

This article describes a hybrid expert system architecture to support yarn fault diagnosis. The s... more This article describes a hybrid expert system architecture to support yarn fault diagnosis. The system uses a combination of rule-based and case-based techniques to achieve the diagnosis. Rule-based systems handle problems with well-defined knowledge bases, which limits the flexibility of such systems. To overcome this inherent weakness of rule-based systems (RBS), case-based reasoning (CBR) has been adopted to improve the performance of the expert system by incorporating previous cases in the generation of new cases. The idea of this research is to use rules to generate a diagnosis on a fault and to use cases to handle exceptions to the rules. The cases are represented using an object-oriented approach to support abstraction, re-use and inheritance features.

This case study describes how one autistic learner, an 11-year-old boy, became a co-researcher wi... more This case study describes how one autistic learner, an 11-year-old boy, became a co-researcher with university literacy instructors to investigate how hypermedia can help him develop language and literacy skills. Data was collected for one year from video taping, journal notes, interviews with teachers and parents, test scores, and student artifacts of reading and writing samples. Researchers learned that fast-paced behavioral games were a detriment to learning language processes, whereas talking books on CD-ROM, schematic mapping software, and simulations helped the learner to increase reading and writing competencies. The learner's scores doubled every six months in reading and writing. (Contains 17 references.) (Author/AEF) * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. *

2018 IST-Africa Week Conference (IST-Africa), 2018

In Namibia, people in the rural and remote areas of the country do not have easy access to health... more In Namibia, people in the rural and remote areas of the country do not have easy access to healthcare as the nearest health clinics are predominantly manned by nurses since there is a shortage of medical doctors. This paper is a study on how to bridge the gap of an inadequate supply of medical doctors in the rural and remote areas through the use of a mobile application for remote telehealth consultation. The mobile telehealth application can assist in improving healthcare service delivery to rural Namibia. The development of the application follows the Software Development Life Cycle. One of the components of the application is an expert system which stores details on a number of diseases, the likely symptoms as well as treatment options and aids the nurse in the clinic to diagnose and treat patients with certain ailments as a first point of call. It also enables the nurse to consult the doctor directly in real-time. This enables consultations between the nurses, patient and doctor...

The increasing need of convenience and affordable retail space infrastructure has created an oppo... more The increasing need of convenience and affordable retail space infrastructure has created an opportunity for small to medium enterprise (SME) retailers to adopt online retailing. Namibia has an improved ICT Infrastructure and internet penetration, thus creating an ideal environment for web-based electronic commerce. SMEs have a tendency of focusing on their domestic market whilst neglecting the global marketplace. To tap into this global marketplace a sustainable eCommerce strategy should be adopted by companies. In this regard, the question that arises is, “How capable are the Namibian SME retailers to create, adopt, use and diffuse the components of a networked or digital economy using the business to consumer (B2C) business model?” This research will aim to show the e-Readiness of Namibian SME retailers and how they have adopted the business to consumer e-Commerce model (B2C) in conducting e-Transactions and then recommend ways for adopting the B2C model in Namibia’s SME retail s...

2020 2nd International Multidisciplinary Information Technology and Engineering Conference (IMITEC), 2020

The widespread adoption of blockchain technology has had a big impact on how people transact in t... more The widespread adoption of blockchain technology has had a big impact on how people transact in the digital world. Individuals can transact in an anonymous but transparent manner. Their identities remain hidden but the records of their transactions are publicly available. This has had its benefits in certain application areas but might not be suited for transactions where it is important to know who you are dealing with and in circumstances where the data in the blockchain might be confidential. Private blockchain networks are better suited for such transactions as only authorized users can transact on the network. Sensitive data can also be stored on the blockchain as it is possible to restrict the users that can see the details of the transactions. This paper describes how to create a private blockchain network and how other users can join the network. It also details the benefits of using a private blockchain network with regards to data privacy as opposed to a public network.

The Namibian healthcare has invested significantly in the use of ICT for healthcare, which includ... more The Namibian healthcare has invested significantly in the use of ICT for healthcare, which includes automated Patient Records Management (PRM). However, Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) has not conducted an impact assessment of the investment in electronic PRM as no Namibia-specific impact assessment frameworks exists for this purpose. This makes it difficult to justify such an investment in the healthcare sector. The aim of this research is to design a framework to assess the impact of information and communication technologies on PRM in the Namibian healthcare sector using the Windhoek Central Hospital as a case study. For this research the modes of data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Sen's capability framework, Rural ICT comprehensive evaluation framework (RICT-CEF), e-Governance framework, Assessment of ICT pilots projects and An extended framework for investigating ICT impact towards development were identified...

2021 IST-Africa Conference (IST-Africa), 2021

This paper reports on the work done in the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) schools, a joint project be... more This paper reports on the work done in the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL) schools, a joint project between the Universities of Rhodes and Fort Hare. The computing infrastructure in SLL is based on the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), which allows client computers to boot from a centralised server and in some cases offload the computation to the server. Most SLL educators find it difficult to manage classroom applications using the GNU/Linux tools directly. So, educators had to rely on others to add applications for their classroom activity, reducing their sense of being in control and making processes longer and less flexible. A recent development in LTSP has introduced the possibility of setting the boot image for the clients within a virtual machine. This paper explores this option in detail and proposes that educators switch to a virtualisation player to manage applications they want to use in the classroom.