Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publisher

Edith Cowan University, Western Australia in association with Khon Kaen University, Thailand and Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University, Thailand.

Comments

EDU-COM 2008 International Conference. Sustainability in Higher Education: Directions for Change, Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia, 19-21 November 2008.

Abstract

Communication and media play a crucial role in both message delivery and the empowerment of people in their own development processes. UNESCO has been actively engaged in trying to build capacity among media professionals to equip them with training in sensitivity to issues, the different formats that they can use to disseminate information, and how best to get the information to the people who are most affected by it (Khan, 2008). One of the challenges of educating large numbers of professionals, particularly in developing countries, is a lack of trained teachers. To meet this challenge, UNESCO commissioned the development of an interactive training program that would innovatively use available technologies for introducing media professionals around the world to the basic knowledge and skills in curriculum development, pedagogical planning and implementation, and evaluation processes. A combination of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning can help to address the issue of access to education. The development of this training package and the pedagogical and instructional design decisions made to ensure equity and sustainability across trainer contexts in a flexible delivery format with a student-centred focus will be examined in this paper. It is hoped that this can assist others in the development of similar educational resources. The project aim was to ensure that media professionals have equitable access to knowledge and skills in effective training practices to develop as trainers and in turn to be effective in inducting new colleagues into the profession. Highly positive evaluations of the CD-ROM from geographically diverse learning contexts are included to demonstrate how this training program succeeded in meeting its brief.

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