Dr. Munienge Mbodila | Walter Sisulu University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Dr. Munienge Mbodila

Research paper thumbnail of Gauging student readiness for university education: a transitional journey

Eureka, Social and Humanities./Eureka, Social and Humanities, Sep 30, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Towards a Cost-Effective SDN-Enabled on-Demand Security Services Framework

Research paper thumbnail of Towards the Design and Implementation of a Blended Learning Framework for Student-Centredness

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Evidence on Student Funding: A Case of a South African Historically Disadvantaged Institution

Research paper thumbnail of Cost-effective internet of things privacy-aware data storage and real-time analysis

IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Feb 29, 2024

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Fault Tolerance Management Systems in SDN

The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments ... more The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments has been one of the major challenges to addressing network administrators' struggles to deal with. The capacity for the network to comprehend the status and the performance of every node has been one of the priorities amongst others for network administrators to protect during troubleshooting in their network. However, the growing use of software-defined networks (SDN) technologies, as well as virtualization, pave the way to the solution of network operation, monitoring, and availability of hardware and services in a network environment. SDN has emerged with a novel paradigm of network abstractions that is dynamic, able to monitor network performance and fault management automatically, using its programmable capability. This paper presents a design of a fault tolerance management system for SDN controller framework for small to mediumsized networks capable of detecting controller faults and nodes/links faults in case entire network access is unavailable. The fault management system applies various approaches for fault detection and recovery to ensure the reliability and availability of the network resources.

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Researchers in Emerging Universities: Lived Experiences (Understanding Challenges Faced

PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal, 2019

This paper presents challenges faced by emerging researchers in rural universities, by exploring ... more This paper presents challenges faced by emerging researchers in rural universities, by exploring their lived experiences throughout the journey of becoming a researcher. The paper argues that research creates new knowledge, benefits the education institutions, and impacts national development and transformation. Higher Education institutions globally, and in South Africa in particular, are striving to increase their research output by presenting research as requisite for academic promotion. Research, as a component in academia, is so valued that the cliché ‘publish or perish’ aptly defines the academic’s career prospects. In a bid to achieve research excellence and boost research output, South African universities, especially the emerging rural universities, went on a massive recruitment drive for Research Fellows, PhD holders and professors, to cultivate research culture and to enhance research output for their institutions. The challenge is that, as soon as a new academic is appointed, they are expected to contribute to the institution’s publication profile. This paper employed Constructivist theory and the qualitative approach within a case study design. Purposive sampling techniques were used to identify three emerging rural institutions and fifteen emerging researchers. Collection of data was done through in-depth one-on-one interviews. Thematic frames were used to present and analyse data. The findings revealed that, among the myriad challenges were heavy workloads and lack of research technical skills. The paper recommends that emerging rural universities’ management conduct workshops in capacity development, research paper writing among others, to empower the emerging researchers.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Fault Tolerance Management Systems in SDN

International Conference on Intelligent and Innovative Computing Applications

The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments ... more The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments has been one of the major challenges to addressing network administrators' struggles to deal with. The capacity for the network to comprehend the status and the performance of every node has been one of the priorities amongst others for network administrators to protect during troubleshooting in their network. However, the growing use of software-defined networks (SDN) technologies, as well as virtualization, pave the way to the solution of network operation, monitoring, and availability of hardware and services in a network environment. SDN has emerged with a novel paradigm of network abstractions that is dynamic, able to monitor network performance and fault management automatically, using its programmable capability. This paper presents a design of a fault tolerance management system for SDN controller framework for small to medium sized networks capable of detecting controller fa...

Research paper thumbnail of Perception of Students Regarding the Support Received During Covid-19: A Case Study of One of the South African Rural Universities

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown of all activities forced the education systems across t... more The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown of all activities forced the education systems across the world and particularly in South Africa to change the mode of teaching from face-to-face to online. This rapid shift has brought about many changes in all sectors, especially in the field of education. Universities across South Africa particularly contact institutions, were affected and enforced lockdowns that extremely prevent face-to-face interaction between teachers in the classroom and students. In the absence of face-to-face teaching and on-site student support, computer-based learning has emerged to substitute for offline teaching and student support. In contrast to such background, it is relevant to investigate students' perceptions regarding the support received during Covid-19. This paper aims to report on students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the support received during the Covid-19 pandemic and their readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) adopted by the University. Data were obtained during a pilot study involving 125 students from various levels on one campus of the institution; using an online survey with a standard Likert scale to determine the extent to which students were satisfied with the quality of support received. The results show that most participants agreed or strongly agreed that the support received was adequate. However, issues such as connectivity, data, lack of proper devices as well as personal challenges were raised. To mitigate these challenges, the institution put in place strategies for each Faculty to respond to students' queries. This paper has implications for policymakers about student support.

Research paper thumbnail of Factors Causing the Decline in Reading Proficiency Among Students Based on a Perception of Migrating from Face-To-Face to Remote Online Learning: A Case of Rural University in South Africa

ICERI2020, the 13th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation was virtually held on the 9th and 10th of November, 2020, 2020

This study explores the factors causing the decline in reading proficiency among first year unive... more This study explores the factors causing the decline in reading proficiency among first year university
students as perceived during the period of shifting from face to face to remote online learning. Twenty
university students were randomly selected from one rural Higher Education institution in the Eastern
Cape (EC) province of South Africa. Data were collected using online questionnaires and analyzed using
quantitative approach to a case study. The findings from the analyzed data reveals a lack of intervention
strategies with regards to teaching language aspects such as reading because in an online platform
students work through recorded lectures and other teaching material at their own pace. However, most
learning is being done through the aspect of speaking, due to various challenges students have no
equitable access on exploring the online platforms to engage on this activity resulting in unavailability of
network connectivity as per their home backgrounds. Online learning can be lonely, the study additional
reveals that some students were found to have begun to feel a strong sense of isolation that slowly
erodes their desire to learn. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that blended learning when
teaching a language encourages personalization of the online experience by combining the best aspects
of face-to-face teaching with online technology-based methods to give students more comprehensive
and understanding of the course content. The study recommends that, approaches such as social
learning be used during online teaching to enable students to interact with instructors as well as
encourage reading by the use of voice notes can be used to enhance reading skills.

Research paper thumbnail of Teaching Strategies in Writing English First Additional Language by Isixhosa Background Learners from Rural Primary Schools

Research paper thumbnail of The Effect of Social Media on Student’s Engagement and Collaboration in Higher Education: A Case Study of the Use of Facebook at a South African University

Journal of Communication, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Intervention Strategies to Improve Students’ Academic Performance in an Open Distance Learning Environment

Research paper thumbnail of “Molo Songololo”: A Cooperative Approach to Technology Integration for Teaching Using the Tpack Model at a Rural University in South Africa

Research paper thumbnail of Surveillance detection of anomalous activities with optimized deep learning technique in crowded scenes

Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics

The performance of conventional surveillance systems is challenged by high error detection rates ... more The performance of conventional surveillance systems is challenged by high error detection rates in busy scenes, which has significantly affected the accurate detection of the current surveillance system. Feature representation and object pattern extraction from different scenes have made deep learning (DL) promising methods in surveillance systems, compared to the approaches where features are created manually. To improve the detection accuracy, this paper presents an intelligent DL technique that combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM). CNN extracts and learns the object features from a set of raw images, while the LSTM is then used by gated mechanisms to store important information from the extracted features. The proposed method was validated using datasets from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). The result shows that the model achieves 95% accuracy, which is superior compared to other conventional detection models.

Research paper thumbnail of Where to and Where From? Eastern Cape Department of Education's Readiness to COVID-19 Pandemic

PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal

Research paper thumbnail of The Use of Technology to Overcome Transitional Challenges of First Year Students From Face-to-Face to Online

The Paris Conference on Education 2022: Official Conference Proceedings

Research paper thumbnail of Data Privacy on using Four Models- A Review

2022 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET)

Research paper thumbnail of A Review of Academic Development Provision in a Higher Education Institution in South Africa: Context, Challenges, Misconceptions and Solutions

Academic Development (AD) as a fairly new field in South Africa has experienced a manifold degree... more Academic Development (AD) as a fairly new field in South Africa has experienced a manifold degree of challenges. In spite of this, academic development practitioners have continued to make strides in providing professional development initiatives in higher education institutions. The main aim of this paper, therefore, is to provide a historic and current context of academic development practice by interrogating its strategic positioning within a higher education institution. In doing so, the paper sketches the context within which AD operates and provides a brief of professional development initiatives undertaken by AD practitioners in a particular university located in South Africa. The paper discusses challenges experienced by AD practitioners and their misconstrued identities as well as misconceptions about Academic Development (AD) field. The study recommends ways in which academic development practitioners can begin to position themselves within higher education institutions and central to these recommendations, is close working relationship with academic departments.

Research paper thumbnail of The use of ICT in Education : a comparison of traditional pedagogy and emerging pedagogy enabled by ICT

Improving excellence in education is a critical issue; mainly at this time of everything is becom... more Improving excellence in education is a critical issue; mainly at this time of everything is becoming globalized. The traditional pedagogy approach to teaching and learning, as ancient as formal teaching itself, involves the directed flow of information from teacher as sage to student as container. This method is characteristically based on pre-packaged learning materials, fixed deadlines, assessment tasks and criteria are defined by teachers. But research has shown that the appropriate use of ICTs can catalyze the paradigmatic shift in both content and pedagogy that is the heart of education reform in the 21 century and promote problem based learning. This paper gives an overview of the traditional ways of teaching and some of its limitations; also discussed the emerging ways of teaching enabled by the use of Information Communication Technology (ICTs), furthermore organizes a variety of approaches found in ICTs uses in Education.

Research paper thumbnail of Gauging student readiness for university education: a transitional journey

Eureka, Social and Humanities./Eureka, Social and Humanities, Sep 30, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Towards a Cost-Effective SDN-Enabled on-Demand Security Services Framework

Research paper thumbnail of Towards the Design and Implementation of a Blended Learning Framework for Student-Centredness

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Evidence on Student Funding: A Case of a South African Historically Disadvantaged Institution

Research paper thumbnail of Cost-effective internet of things privacy-aware data storage and real-time analysis

IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence, Feb 29, 2024

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Fault Tolerance Management Systems in SDN

The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments ... more The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments has been one of the major challenges to addressing network administrators' struggles to deal with. The capacity for the network to comprehend the status and the performance of every node has been one of the priorities amongst others for network administrators to protect during troubleshooting in their network. However, the growing use of software-defined networks (SDN) technologies, as well as virtualization, pave the way to the solution of network operation, monitoring, and availability of hardware and services in a network environment. SDN has emerged with a novel paradigm of network abstractions that is dynamic, able to monitor network performance and fault management automatically, using its programmable capability. This paper presents a design of a fault tolerance management system for SDN controller framework for small to mediumsized networks capable of detecting controller faults and nodes/links faults in case entire network access is unavailable. The fault management system applies various approaches for fault detection and recovery to ensure the reliability and availability of the network resources.

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Researchers in Emerging Universities: Lived Experiences (Understanding Challenges Faced

PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal, 2019

This paper presents challenges faced by emerging researchers in rural universities, by exploring ... more This paper presents challenges faced by emerging researchers in rural universities, by exploring their lived experiences throughout the journey of becoming a researcher. The paper argues that research creates new knowledge, benefits the education institutions, and impacts national development and transformation. Higher Education institutions globally, and in South Africa in particular, are striving to increase their research output by presenting research as requisite for academic promotion. Research, as a component in academia, is so valued that the cliché ‘publish or perish’ aptly defines the academic’s career prospects. In a bid to achieve research excellence and boost research output, South African universities, especially the emerging rural universities, went on a massive recruitment drive for Research Fellows, PhD holders and professors, to cultivate research culture and to enhance research output for their institutions. The challenge is that, as soon as a new academic is appointed, they are expected to contribute to the institution’s publication profile. This paper employed Constructivist theory and the qualitative approach within a case study design. Purposive sampling techniques were used to identify three emerging rural institutions and fifteen emerging researchers. Collection of data was done through in-depth one-on-one interviews. Thematic frames were used to present and analyse data. The findings revealed that, among the myriad challenges were heavy workloads and lack of research technical skills. The paper recommends that emerging rural universities’ management conduct workshops in capacity development, research paper writing among others, to empower the emerging researchers.

Research paper thumbnail of Towards Fault Tolerance Management Systems in SDN

International Conference on Intelligent and Innovative Computing Applications

The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments ... more The issue of network operation, monitoring, and availability in traditional network environments has been one of the major challenges to addressing network administrators' struggles to deal with. The capacity for the network to comprehend the status and the performance of every node has been one of the priorities amongst others for network administrators to protect during troubleshooting in their network. However, the growing use of software-defined networks (SDN) technologies, as well as virtualization, pave the way to the solution of network operation, monitoring, and availability of hardware and services in a network environment. SDN has emerged with a novel paradigm of network abstractions that is dynamic, able to monitor network performance and fault management automatically, using its programmable capability. This paper presents a design of a fault tolerance management system for SDN controller framework for small to medium sized networks capable of detecting controller fa...

Research paper thumbnail of Perception of Students Regarding the Support Received During Covid-19: A Case Study of One of the South African Rural Universities

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown of all activities forced the education systems across t... more The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown of all activities forced the education systems across the world and particularly in South Africa to change the mode of teaching from face-to-face to online. This rapid shift has brought about many changes in all sectors, especially in the field of education. Universities across South Africa particularly contact institutions, were affected and enforced lockdowns that extremely prevent face-to-face interaction between teachers in the classroom and students. In the absence of face-to-face teaching and on-site student support, computer-based learning has emerged to substitute for offline teaching and student support. In contrast to such background, it is relevant to investigate students' perceptions regarding the support received during Covid-19. This paper aims to report on students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the support received during the Covid-19 pandemic and their readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) adopted by the University. Data were obtained during a pilot study involving 125 students from various levels on one campus of the institution; using an online survey with a standard Likert scale to determine the extent to which students were satisfied with the quality of support received. The results show that most participants agreed or strongly agreed that the support received was adequate. However, issues such as connectivity, data, lack of proper devices as well as personal challenges were raised. To mitigate these challenges, the institution put in place strategies for each Faculty to respond to students' queries. This paper has implications for policymakers about student support.

Research paper thumbnail of Factors Causing the Decline in Reading Proficiency Among Students Based on a Perception of Migrating from Face-To-Face to Remote Online Learning: A Case of Rural University in South Africa

ICERI2020, the 13th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation was virtually held on the 9th and 10th of November, 2020, 2020

This study explores the factors causing the decline in reading proficiency among first year unive... more This study explores the factors causing the decline in reading proficiency among first year university
students as perceived during the period of shifting from face to face to remote online learning. Twenty
university students were randomly selected from one rural Higher Education institution in the Eastern
Cape (EC) province of South Africa. Data were collected using online questionnaires and analyzed using
quantitative approach to a case study. The findings from the analyzed data reveals a lack of intervention
strategies with regards to teaching language aspects such as reading because in an online platform
students work through recorded lectures and other teaching material at their own pace. However, most
learning is being done through the aspect of speaking, due to various challenges students have no
equitable access on exploring the online platforms to engage on this activity resulting in unavailability of
network connectivity as per their home backgrounds. Online learning can be lonely, the study additional
reveals that some students were found to have begun to feel a strong sense of isolation that slowly
erodes their desire to learn. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that blended learning when
teaching a language encourages personalization of the online experience by combining the best aspects
of face-to-face teaching with online technology-based methods to give students more comprehensive
and understanding of the course content. The study recommends that, approaches such as social
learning be used during online teaching to enable students to interact with instructors as well as
encourage reading by the use of voice notes can be used to enhance reading skills.

Research paper thumbnail of Teaching Strategies in Writing English First Additional Language by Isixhosa Background Learners from Rural Primary Schools

Research paper thumbnail of The Effect of Social Media on Student’s Engagement and Collaboration in Higher Education: A Case Study of the Use of Facebook at a South African University

Journal of Communication, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Intervention Strategies to Improve Students’ Academic Performance in an Open Distance Learning Environment

Research paper thumbnail of “Molo Songololo”: A Cooperative Approach to Technology Integration for Teaching Using the Tpack Model at a Rural University in South Africa

Research paper thumbnail of Surveillance detection of anomalous activities with optimized deep learning technique in crowded scenes

Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics

The performance of conventional surveillance systems is challenged by high error detection rates ... more The performance of conventional surveillance systems is challenged by high error detection rates in busy scenes, which has significantly affected the accurate detection of the current surveillance system. Feature representation and object pattern extraction from different scenes have made deep learning (DL) promising methods in surveillance systems, compared to the approaches where features are created manually. To improve the detection accuracy, this paper presents an intelligent DL technique that combines convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM). CNN extracts and learns the object features from a set of raw images, while the LSTM is then used by gated mechanisms to store important information from the extracted features. The proposed method was validated using datasets from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). The result shows that the model achieves 95% accuracy, which is superior compared to other conventional detection models.

Research paper thumbnail of Where to and Where From? Eastern Cape Department of Education's Readiness to COVID-19 Pandemic

PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal

Research paper thumbnail of The Use of Technology to Overcome Transitional Challenges of First Year Students From Face-to-Face to Online

The Paris Conference on Education 2022: Official Conference Proceedings

Research paper thumbnail of Data Privacy on using Four Models- A Review

2022 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET)

Research paper thumbnail of A Review of Academic Development Provision in a Higher Education Institution in South Africa: Context, Challenges, Misconceptions and Solutions

Academic Development (AD) as a fairly new field in South Africa has experienced a manifold degree... more Academic Development (AD) as a fairly new field in South Africa has experienced a manifold degree of challenges. In spite of this, academic development practitioners have continued to make strides in providing professional development initiatives in higher education institutions. The main aim of this paper, therefore, is to provide a historic and current context of academic development practice by interrogating its strategic positioning within a higher education institution. In doing so, the paper sketches the context within which AD operates and provides a brief of professional development initiatives undertaken by AD practitioners in a particular university located in South Africa. The paper discusses challenges experienced by AD practitioners and their misconstrued identities as well as misconceptions about Academic Development (AD) field. The study recommends ways in which academic development practitioners can begin to position themselves within higher education institutions and central to these recommendations, is close working relationship with academic departments.

Research paper thumbnail of The use of ICT in Education : a comparison of traditional pedagogy and emerging pedagogy enabled by ICT

Improving excellence in education is a critical issue; mainly at this time of everything is becom... more Improving excellence in education is a critical issue; mainly at this time of everything is becoming globalized. The traditional pedagogy approach to teaching and learning, as ancient as formal teaching itself, involves the directed flow of information from teacher as sage to student as container. This method is characteristically based on pre-packaged learning materials, fixed deadlines, assessment tasks and criteria are defined by teachers. But research has shown that the appropriate use of ICTs can catalyze the paradigmatic shift in both content and pedagogy that is the heart of education reform in the 21 century and promote problem based learning. This paper gives an overview of the traditional ways of teaching and some of its limitations; also discussed the emerging ways of teaching enabled by the use of Information Communication Technology (ICTs), furthermore organizes a variety of approaches found in ICTs uses in Education.