Building a better Learning Management System for teachers: How Agile methods are being used to support education reform in Tanzania

Last year, the Government of Tanzania initiated an overhaul of its basic education system, captured in the 2023 Policy Reform.  This reform has been characterised by a renewed commitment to competence-based learning, and the integration of technology and inclusive approaches. The goal is to improve learning outcomes significantly. 

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), EdTech Hub has been supporting the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE) to deliver cost-effective, quality Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD) to ensure Tanzania’s teachers have the knowledge and skills to implement the new curricula. 

The MEWAKA  programme, known in Swahili, hinges on two key elements: an e-Learning Management System (LMS) and school-based Communities of Learning (CoLs) which meet weekly or bi-weekly. Our blog focuses on the LMS and specifically, we describe how funding from BMGF has enabled EdTech Hub to lead a team of expert software engineers and content developers to iteratively improve this teacher-focused technology.

An e-Learning Management System is a software platform designed to deliver, manage, and track educational courses and training programs. 

In this case, the Learning Management System is designed to provide teachers nationwide with access to approved TCPD content aligned with the curriculum and tailored to the experiences of Tanzanian teachers (for example, how to manage large class sizes or create resources from local materials).

Image showing MEWAKA LMS – Course Selection page in Swahili. Credit: TIE MEWAKA LMS

Image showing Screenshot of MEWAKA LMS homepage in Swahili. Credit: TIE MEWAKA LMS

Content facilitates both interactive, self-paced learning (e.g., with online quizzes), and collaborative group learning with targeted modules for the Communities of Learning. 

Our efforts to enhance the LMS have taken an agile approach, targeting four critical areas:

1. Accessibility – if teachers can’t access the LMS, they won’t engage with its content.
2. Usability – if teachers find it difficult to navigate the LMS, they won’t engage with its content.
3. Quality – if teachers find the content boring or irrelevant, or of low quality, it won’t strengthen teachers’ knowledge and skills.
4. Sustainability – if we achieve the above, but don’t ensure the LMS is backed up and TIE staff can maintain it, then progress can be lost due to a bug or poor management.

What is Agile?

Agile is a method of building and running digital services. It is used by software developers globally, and, increasingly, by governments as a cost-effective way to develop and maintain digital products fit for purpose.

While the specific methodologies differ, agile principles remain the same:

• focus on user needs
• deliver iteratively
• keep improving how your team works
• fail fast and learn quickly
• keep planning
  

Why use Agile for this? 

As a government digital product, the LMS needs to offer a cost-effective solution for delivering TCPD nationwide. To achieve this, the LMS needs to meet the primary requirements of its users while keeping the development costs low.

Agile maximises value for money by emphasising iteration and prioritising user needs. Focused user research and prioritisation with TIE enabled us to categorise requirements as ‘must haves’, ‘should have’ and ‘would be nice to have’. ‘Must haves’ are the most urgent and severe requirements, and have informed each of our LMS Sprint goals.

Each Sprint is time bound (over 4-6 days) and uses an iterative process. Our team ideates solutions to specific LMS requirements, tests, and iterates based on feedback. Restricting time means the team reduces distraction, while continuous iteration means we consistently test whether we are meeting user needs.

An agile approach is far from the status quo in Tanzania. Therefore, this project has been as much about introducing the government to a new way of thinking as it has about product development. Prioritisation activities helped TIE to determine which features were the most critical. While training  TIE content developers in user research has allowed them to think differently about what the content should include. As many LMICs digitise government services, it is increasingly important to help governments understand how to centre users in the process and prioritise testing over premature commitment to solutions.

Image showing Screenshot of Agile Approach in Action at the Inception Workshop. Credit: EdTech Hub

What we’ve done against our 4 critical areas

1. Accessibility

• Search Engine Optimisation has made it easier for teachers to find the LMS via an internet search engine: the number of organic searches over 6 months has increased by 85.75% from 6246 (June – December 2023) to 45,110 (January – August 2024).
  
• Mobile App improvements have more than doubled the number of mobile app users (from 676 in December 2023, to 1804 in July 2024). Interestingly, while approximately 83% of users use a mobile phone to access the LMS, most do so via a web browser and not via the mobile app (approx. 12%).

2. Usability

• Translation of the platform from English to Kiswahili has increased users’ ability to spontaneously navigate. 
• Development of a data dashboard enables TIE and Ministry staff, as well as researchers to investigate usage and engagement, including identifying the regions and districts which have fewer registered teachers/low LMs usage.

3. Sustainability

• Automated synchronisation and back-up has set up the LMS for success in the face of potential bugs and Tanzania’s power outages by ensuring data won’t be lost.
• Introducing a User Acceptance Testing server allows new features to be tested and user research to take place without disrupting the live LMS or contaminating LMS data.
• A capacity audit of TIE identified key personnel to engage in capacity building, and we made recommendations on staffing composition, job descriptions and infrastructure investments necessary to maintain and manage the LMS effectively. 

4. Quality Content

• Capacity building to equip instructional designers and content developers with skills for better content management (e.g., securing sensitive or restricted content; restoring and archiving courses, etc.) and certificate creation. Certificates have been repeatedly found to motivate teachers to engage in TCPD and TIE is eager to have digital certificates as a form of tracking TCPD completion.
  
• Next, we plan to improve LMS content through the development of TCPD videos to target key skills supporting teaching of foundational literacy and numeracy, and the development of guidelines for TCPD video production to enhance the quality and consistency of LMS video content.

 Practical lessons from applying Agile with the Tanzanian government 

• Build the right team: There’s no space for micromanaging with Agile. The way to avoid this is to make sure you have a skilled team of developers and a competent ‘scrum-master’ to drive the process. Witnessing the efficiency and output of an Agile Sprint is a great way to demonstrate to government stakeholders that having the right team with regular reviews may outweigh the institutional benefits of building a product in-house. 

• Reprioritise regularly to help navigate bureaucracy: An Agile approach in a bureaucratic context feels, at first, like a juxtaposition. A Sprint activity can be blocked by an arduous process to secure a green light. For example, because this is a government product, translating the platform to Kiswahili required official approval of particular terms, like ‘restore course’ or ‘accessibility toolkit’. To help minimise disruption from bureaucracy, our scrum master and product owner keep continuous oversight of all the priority requirements, so if one is blocked we can redirect efforts to another urgent need. Sprint Retrospectives are also an opportunity to reflect on blockers and determine whether a feature is more politicised or complex than originally thought which helps to inform next steps.

• Keep a laser focus on the intended user and ‘shield their data’: When you have a good product, you’ll attract users who aren’t necessarily the target. This is true of TIE’s LMS. Secondary Education stakeholders recently added their TCPD content and invited Secondary Teachers to use the platform, despite pre-and primary teachers being the target. Creating a one-stop platform for national TCPD makes sense, but it’s critical that the platform can not just provide TCPD, but drive TCPD. To do so, it needs to generate accurate data that TIE can use to continuously improve content and access for its target teachers. As Product Manager Professor Mtebe stated: ‘We need to shield our [primary teacher] data from contamination with secondary teachers’.

Conclusion

Improving the TCPD Learning Management System through an agile approach is delivering results: we’ve made remarkable progress towards securing the quality and scale of TCPD necessary to achieve foundational literacy and numeracy (set forth in the education policy reform). Maximising the impact of the LMS needs continuous user feedback so improvements respond to the most urgent and severe needs. Not only is this the most cost-effective route to impact, but it also serves as a compelling example of how the Tanzanian government (and others!) can leverage technology to address key challenges in education and beyond.