Entries from January 2008

How can we improve the quality of instructional materials?

January 28, 2008 · 37 Comments

The recent posts on “Devcompage’s new look” and “How readable are food recipes?” elicited scintillating comments from readers. A reader’s comment on the usefulness of running readability tests on VSU’s instructional materials was followed by an account of a devcom alumnus about his experiences in our classrooms. The chain of comments is worth reading as it brings to the fore some key issues about instruction — the readability of instructional materials, page design elements that contribute to reading ease, the need to ensure accuracy in textbook content, relevance or timeliness of content, etc. Equally important in classroom learning is the “feel good” factor which can be the sum of all these parts.

Interesting comments have continued to be posted or sent to me by email to build on the earlier comments in “Devcompage’s new look” which deserve attention. I’d like to invite the readers to post their comments on what they have done or what can be done to improve the quality of instructional materials.

Best practices

Through your comments, I hope we can pull together a compilation of “best practices” in developing instructional materials (IMs) and distill what works best in the classroom, training center or field. Results will be synthesized and presented in this blog. We can then share the results with university administrators, teachers, parents, students, future teachers, and others who care about the quality of instruction. Here are tentative guide questions. Tackle any of these in which you have an unforgettable experience or that which you are passionate about.

Students/alumni

  • From what type of instructional materials do you learn the most?
  • From which medium or media mix do you retain information more - paper handouts or PowerPoint presentations, a website? Why?
  • In this age of competing new media (cell phones, email, weblogs, podcasts, videocasts, etc.) how can those be tapped for instruction?
  • What has been your best classroom experience?
  • What classroom activities made you learn more?
  • What were the qualities of the teachers who engaged your attention and participation?

Teachers/trainers/resource persons

  • What sort of instructional materials do you give your students? Are these free or paid for?
  • How did you design your instructional materials to ensure that they are read by your training participants or students?
  • How do you make training or classroom instruction a worthwhile experience?
  • If your university is resource-handicapped, how did you circumvent that to “satisfice” and manage to improve the quality of instruction?
  • If you are not using information and communication technology or online resources in your classroom instruction, why not? What are the constraints in using a website or a weblog for instruction?

Extension specialists

  • What types of extension materials do you use to reach your intended beneficiaries?
  • Have you tried using ICTs to reach, motivate and teach farmers?
  • What are your experiences in the use of cell phones to provide agricultural advice to farmers?
  • What has been farmers’ response to ICTs?
  • What is the current state of ICT access among farmers in your area?
  • What are your difficulties when it comes to preparing instructional materials for extension?

Your comments will help enlighten everyone who is concerned about teaching and learning. Please post your comments.

Categories: Educational communication
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Audience research - what, why and how?

January 25, 2008 · 4 Comments

Can Tho University (Vietnam) students on their way to conduct a farmer survey in Vinh Thanh district

Next week, our DC 132 class will design their own audience research projects. Their assignment over the weekend is to think about a topic that they are passionate about. Here are some ideas I got from the class on possible audience analysis topics:

  • Students’ feedback to the university student publication - frequency of issue, editorial staff, content (writing style, choice of topics, grammar, etc.), page size, cover design, etc.
  • Listenership and impact of the university’s rural educational radio station – who listens to it, how many listen to it, audience demographics, what is done with information received, adoption and adaptation, and impact — changes in household and farm enterprises, livelihood, productivity and profitability
  • Internet usage of university students
  • Students’ information acquisition patterns – information sources for school work (library, Internet, both), Internet usage – frequency, number of hours spent, where Internet use done, type of Internet activities engaged in (email, blogging, seeking general information, surfing, chat rooms, websites frequently visited, etc.)
  • Gender differences in news media exposure
  • Current news awareness and news media exposure of high school and college students
  • Viewership of “fantaseryes” among grade school children

What is audience research?
Audience research is any communication research that is conducted on specific audience segments to gather information about their demographics, media habits, needs, attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences, or behaviors.

Why conduct audience research?
Audience research is undertaken at the initial stages of a communication campaign to understand the intended audience’s needs, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, barriers or constraints to a recommended basket of options. At this stage, information is also obtained on audience preferences for communication channels or formats and usage frequency and schedule. Audience analysis enables the communication planner to determine the types of incentives and barriers that the audience perceive to exist, their most preferred channels or formats, the most credible sources, segment an audience into groups with similar information needs and preferences, select the objectives most appropriate for an audience, select the best media channels to reach an audience, develop concepts or messages to achieve the communications objectives and plan for communication impact assessment.

Audience research methods
Also referred to as market research or formative research, audience analysis involves the use of focus group discussions, literature and document reviews, community consultations, rapid rural appraisals, scoping studies, and knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) surveys. While focusing on the key issues to be addressed by the communication program, audience research variables largely include population size and distribution, language spoken, literacy and educational levels, socio-cultural factors, economic indicators, health indicators, psychographics, and other variables.

How to conduct an audience analysis survey

Because the cost of implementing surveys is often high, it is important that they are planned and conducted with utmost care. Audience analysis surveys follow the standard survey methodology described in social science textbooks. A summary of these steps is presented below:

1. Identify the problem or issues to be addressed by the survey.

2. Formulate survey objectives

The survey objective might be to determine the media habits and perceptions, knowledge, and practices in environmental protection of farm families. Drawing up a list of variables that will help find answers to the survey objectives could put the researcher on the right track in designing the questions to ask in the survey. Specific questions that are aimed at various aspects of the problem could help clarify the research problem.

3. Develop the survey instrument

In a survey, a popular instrument used for data collection is a questionnaire which contains a series of questions designed to gather information from the respondents. The survey questionnaire may contain questions on the demographics of respondents, their communication access and exposure, knowledge, attitude and practice questions on an identified problem, among others.

4. Pretest the questionnaire

When the survey questionnaire has been compiled, it needs to be translated into the local language and pretested before being reproduced and used in the field. Pretesting involves interviewing a small group of respondents who are similar to the intended target group to determine their reactions to the prototype questionnaire. The pretest is a screening of the questionnaire to see how it works and whether changes are necessary before the start of the actual survey.

5. Choose sample respondents

An important concern in survey research is deciding how many and which respondents should be included. An audience analysis survey uses standard social science methods in selecting the sample, e.g., multi-stage sampling, stratified sampling, systematic sampling, cluster sampling, and simple random sampling. The choice of sampling technique depends primarily on the nature of the problem, the cost and time factors involved, and the desired precision or reliability of the results. It is recommended that the sample be drawn from a cross-section of the sampling population so that this group can be said to represent the larger population.

6. Implement the field survey

When the questionnaire has been pretested, finalized and reproduced, the next step is to implement the field survey. Before they are fielded, interviewers are oriented on the purpose of the survey and trained on interviewing skills and how to conduct the interviews. Guided by the sampling plan and respondent list, the interviewers locate the respondents, conduct the interviews, and check the completed questionnaires after the interview.

7. Coding and analyzing survey data

Once the completed questionnaires have been edited, the data need to be analyzed. Depending on the main objective of the survey, this analysis phase can be relatively simple – such as manually determining the % of respondents giving specific answers or listing the various ways in which farmers said they might utilize a new practice. For more complex surveys, particularly where the aim is to predict for the entire population from the results of the sample population, it is best that the data are encoded, processed and analyzed using a statistical package. Ease of use, power, and cost are some of the important considerations in the choice of computer software for data analysis.

8. Write the survey report

The analyzed data are interpreted and the results of this interpretative process are reported. The purpose of a survey report is to tell the readers the research problem, data collection methods used, findings, and conclusions. Like other research reports, the survey report should consist of an executive summary, introduction, description of the methods, results and discussion, and conclusions.

For a sample audience analysis report, click here …

Categories: Evaluation of communication materials
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Devcompage’s new look

January 21, 2008 · 10 Comments

Our recent post on “How readable are food recipes” got the most views from readers over several days and still counting. I had not expected such interest in a popular application of readability measures. Before the weekend, a social science colleague told me that reading Devcompage informed him about the existence of readability tests and that perhaps the instructional materials of the university should be assessed for reading ease.

That got me to rethink the readability of Devcompage. Apart from the number of words, number of sentences and polysyllables, using larger font sizes, san serif fonts, and having a lot of white space contribute to the readability of a page design. This we learned in undergrad journalism courses. Experts says that larger font sizes, san serif fonts (like Arial Century Gothic, Verdana, etc.) and having a lot of white space contribute to readability. Sans-serifs are fonts that don’t have serifs. They look more modern and are more readable than serifs because they are simpler.

Once I approached the late Gerry Gil, a wordsmith, who had a Ph.D. from Stanford University, to ask which was more readable — Times Roman or Arial. Gerry said that while the rule says san serif fonts are easier to read, it really is a matter of familiarity.

The new theme of Devcompage is an attempt to enhance its readability. Let me know your comments.

Categories: Educational communication
Tagged: , , ,

How to do content analysis: a step-by-step guide

January 17, 2008 · 12 Comments

As there are tests to assess the readability of food recipes from celebrity chefs, there are also techniques to determine the themes, dominant patterns, portrayal, and treatment of specific issues in newspapers, comics, TV and radio programs, posters, and even the new media such as websites and weblogs.

My undergrad DC132 class will carry out their individual content analysis projects and I came up with a simplified procedure to make their first foray into the world of content analysis easier. A short content analysis project can be done on any of these topics: 1) portrayal of women, children, alcoholism, smoking in films; 2) weekend commercial load on primetime of a leading TV station; 3) treatment of governance, corruption, environmental issues, health, economics, tourism, etc. in one week consecutive issues of a leading national newspaper; 4) structure and content of blogs (food, travel, politics, students, etc.). Here’s the procedure:

Step 1 - State your research question - or what do you want to find out?1.1 What are the structural characteristics and content of ______ blogs (student, food, travel, homemaking, political, etc.)?

1.2 How are environmental issues covered and treated in a major national broadsheet?
1.3 How is ________ (alcoholism, smoking, homosexuality, children, women) portrayed in primetime TV programs?
1.4 What types of news stories are prevalent in the early and late evening TV news?
1.5 What percentage of primetime TV news is … crime, accidents, graft and corruption, development issues?
1.6 What is the match between audience and type of commercials aired on primetime TV?
1.7 How are ________ (women, children, smoking, alcoholism) portrayed in films?

Step 2 - Outline your research plan to gather the information. Describe how you will observe, categorize, record and quantify your observations.

A constructed calendar will facilitate your sampling procedure. Prepare 7 boxes with each box representing the days of the week. On slips of paper, write the dates of all days of the week in one month and place them in separate boxes. Thus, there will be a Monday box, a Tuesday box, and so on. This is done to ensure that each day of the week is represented in your study. Depending on the sample size you have decided on (say, 35% of a year’s issues), randomly pick 2 to 4 slips from each box until you have drawn the required sample issues. Mark the sampled dates on a calendar to guide you in selecting the issues to be analyzed. In the sample constructed calendar below, the sample dates (in boldface) are January 2, 14, 25 and 29 representing a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

January 2008

Sun

 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Step 3 - Gather and analyze the data
Step 4 - Write up your findings — in tables, charts and text

For specific procedures …

Categories: Evaluation of communication materials
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How readable are food recipes?

January 15, 2008 · 3 Comments

Espasol - a native delicacy made of toasted gluttinous rice flour

In my other blog, placesandfood, I share some of my own recipes with readers, particularly the recipe for espasol (pictured above) which took me many years to perfect. In that blog, I often talk about the human interest side of the recipe, like where to buy the best espasol, where to get the ingredients, where to have the toasted sticky rice milled or where I started cooking it. Yet, I haven’t really explored if the measurements and procedure are easy to understand to blog readers out there.

Before the year 2007 ended, our DC132 class discussed the various readability formulas and calculated the reading ease of sample materials using the Flesch formula, Gunning’s Fog Index, SMOG test, and the cloze procedure. These readability tests illuminated some rules about how to make our prose understandable: use simple words, avoid polysyllables, and use shorter sentences.

Well, what do you know? Just as I was about to start a series of posts on a step-by-step guide to content analysis for my DC132 students, I stumbled on an interesting report published in UK’s Telegraph. The study, conducted by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, examined the readability of recipes of popular celebrity chefs. The research was carried out to highlight the Government’s adult learning campaign.

The study assessed 35 recipes published by five of the most popular celebrity chefs and assessed their readability and writing style. Female celebrity chefs, who used complex language in their cookbooks, appeared to be harder to understand in print than their male counterparts. The report noted that Gordon Ramsay’s language is so easy to read that his cooking methods could be followed by a seven-year-old. Similarly Nigel Slater, whose book The 30-Minute Cook is a best-seller, writes instructions that a child of 11 would have no problems comprehending.

However, more than 5.3 million adults would not be able to understand Nigella Lawson’s instructions as her writing style is too “chatty” and she uses long sentences.

The report confirmed what readability tests have long pointed out — that in order to understand the long sentences, complex measurements and complicated words, one must have GCSE standard reading and numeracy skills

Read more …

Categories: Evaluation of communication materials
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Three Reductions, Three Gains - media campaign that changed millions of farmers

January 9, 2008 · No Comments

3r-participatory-paper

"Three Reductions, Three Gains" poster

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to help design a media campaign on crop resource management in Vietnam. So successful was the scaling up initiative that the Vietnamese government endorsed it as an innovation, allocating huge financial support for its nationwide implementation, and listing it as a regular budget item. Here are the details …

To motivate farmers to reduce seed rate and use of fertilizer and pesticides, a media campaign called “Three Reductions, Three Gains” (“Ba Giam, Ba Tang”) was launched in Can Tho and Tien Giang provinces in 2003. The project involved bringing together research and development partners, extensive farmer participatory experiments, getting local expertise to train extension staff and farmers, and working together with all stakeholders to plan and implement the scaling up initiative. In both provinces, farmers’ use of seeds, nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides changed significantly. Their seed rates dropped ~ 10%, nitrogen rates fell ~ 7 %, insecticide sprays reduced by 13 to 33% and the proportion of farmers using insecticides declined by ~11%. These practices were supported by modifications in attitudes that favored high inputs. Farmers also changed their perception of yield loss when less input was used. The campaigns in Can Tho and Tien Giang had significant multiplier effects. They stimulated several provincial governments as well as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to provide additional resources to adapt the materials and the campaign process for local and national use and in 2005 reached more than 3 million farmers in South and Central Vietnam.

In July 2004, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development attributed increase in farmer earnings to Three Reductions and awarded the project the 2003 Golden Rice award. On February 18 2005, the minister of agriculture signed a policy paper urging all provinces to adopt “Ba Giam, Ba Tang” and created a national committee to develop nationwide implementation plans. In December 2005, the Can Tho Government awarded Ba Giam Ba Tang, the Best Innovation Award for bringing to the thousands of farmers increase in earnings and reduction in environmental pollution.

Read more …

Categories: Scaling up
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Information is not a zero-sum phenomenon

January 3, 2008 · 2 Comments

Just recently, one of the gods in our university asked me why I did not restrict access to this blog (devcompage.com) to just my students. Although I was startled to hear that view, I explained that I prefer a wider community of readers to enhance information exchange. Through the comments to the posts, readers get to learn more as related issues are raised and new ideas are generated. The devcom information I post in my blog comes from my own professional experience and academic training and will only be useful if freely shared. After all, information is not a zero-sum phenomenon.

In his book Communications in the Rural Third World (1980, Praeger Publishers, New York), Emile McAnany wrote that “information promotes equity because unlike material resources, information (or education) is not a zero-sum phenomenon.” It means that by sharing it with others does not take it away from another. Or an increase in information in one person does not lead to a corresponding decrease in someone else. Economists have another way of putting it — giving away information will have no added marginal cost. Or words to that effect.

As bloggers know, blogs allow content to be shared instantly with the whole world. In my other blog on a lighter topic (http://placesandfood.blogspot.com), I share my kitchen-tested recipes with a faceless, nameless audience out there. I may not know them as many do not leave a comment but my blog stats or Google analytics tell me their number and their geographical location. That’s enough to warm my heart. In fact, I had this recipe for a native delicacy called espasol that I had kept a secret from my friends for many years. It was only when I started my travel and food blog that I decided to share the recipe with others. I wrote that since I had not parlayed it into big business, it was time to share it with the readers. Writing a blog seems to give one a generous spirit, sharing lessons and best-kept secrets for the benefit of others.

Ted Demopoulos (What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, Kaplan Publishing, 2007) noted that unlike in traditional knowledge management where information access comes with restrictions, blogs can democratize the flow of information.

Categories: Development communication
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