Learning Process


The purpose of action research in rural development scholarship is to seek improved relationships, better institutions and enabling knowledge to be shared. In the action research project "Linking Agricultural Research and Rural Radio" ISNAR, the University of Guelph, DCFRN and its partners in the three countries, Cameroon, Ghana and Uganda have worked towards improved knowledge-based interactions among scientists, extension workers and farmers through the use of rural radio.


What have we learned in this project?

Firstly, as the specific team activities discussed above have suggested, there is no single prototype on how to link as partners for open learning in community-based agricultural and rural development. Each team has been strongly influenced by the motivation (or lack thereof) of its members, its local context and needs, the resources available to the team and the issue or set of topics which the team has decided to address. In this project rural radio as a medium for open learning has been used in the following ways:

  • as a medium for information dissemination and its repetition
  • as a rapid release medium to support knowledge gathering using quantitative and qualitative survey techniques
  • as a facilitating medium for knowledge exchange in field meetings involving researchers, extension workers and farmer organizations
  • as a virtual forum or space for farmer listening and discussion groups
  • as a documentary or repository of learning and practical experience
  • as a community center where team meetings could take place and farmers could visit to request information

An important aspect of the open learning activities was that the teams all depended on direct, interpersonal communication with farmers as much if not more than the interaction they had with farmers through the media (radio or print). Radio was always used to complement and contribute to social interaction, not replace it.


Action Planning, Uganda Teams Meeting.     photo: M. Leggett

Secondly, the support received from the COL PROTEIN initiative was important in terms of being able to offer each of the eight teams in the project an opportunity to develop and implement smaller projects at the local level. This was a "trial run" on working together and the results are likely to strengthen the teams' capacities to follow through on their larger concept notes developed during the learning workshop in Kumasi, Ghana in 2002, reworked and in some cases, already submitted to donors. The action plans for each of the teams are living documents that are improved with their continued interaction.

A third conclusion that can be made in relation to the project and its support from COL PROTEIN relates to the model developed for research-extension-farmer linkages known as "Learning to Link." In this model (see the article in the Journal of Development Communication) the final step was " implementation of the action plans." Given the experience that teams have had with implementing their team action plans and COL projects, the model can and should be revised as follows in order to include a loop that takes the application of team learning back into the next set of activities undertaken by the same team or new teams that can learn from previous team experiences.