Media training: triumphs or travesties Experience from Southern Africa

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Media training triumphs or travesties?Experien
ce from Southern Africa

• by Guy Berger,
• presentation to seminar
• Impact indicators making a difference
• Independent Journalism Centre, Chisinau, Moldova
• 15 May 2003

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Preview points

• Stakeholders
• Complexities
• Principles
• Priorities
• Case study
• Conclusion

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Introduction ideal logic

• Constructing new societies
• ?
• Medias role in democracy
• ?
• Strengthen through training

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Get close up to stakeholders

• Ideal vs reality
• Journalists are
• not saints
• Donors media are industries
• Training impact is unclear

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Close up 1 Trainers interests

• True or false?
• Trainers are pure altruists

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Who earns who learns?

• Choose the right answer -
• Who gets the most benefit from training
• (a) trainer?
• (b) trainee?
• (c) employer?
• (d) donor?

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Close up 2 Donor drivers

• King of the network
• An industry as well
• Has its own market fashions, flirtations
  fluctuations
• Needs hard results deliverables reqd
• But hard to measure.

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Close up 3 employers

• Some employers dont want better journalists
• Most dont want to pay for training some cant
• Fewer have a training strategy

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Close up 4 Trainees

• True or false?
• Many are professional trainees in search of per
  diems

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Once theyre trained, we pray theyll stay

• Hand-up hand-out into PR industry/govt?
• Does training lead to draining of talent?
• Do we really make enough sustained impact from
  our training?

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Close up summing up

• So, creating effective training is a hard-nosed
  business!
• And there are different interests in impact
  assessment (IA)
• trainers,
• funders,
• trainees,
• employers

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A complex business

• Creativity chaos complicate cause-effect
• Yet what works best -
• Train on-site or not?
• Centre vs periphery?
• Language culture?
• Skill, talks texts?
• Journos as trainers?

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More complexity

• Skills transfer, or is it growth?
• Go for breadth, with many trained, or
• Go for depth train fewer, but better?

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Is there a multiplier effect?

• Do trainees bomb out back at the newsroom?

Or is it each one, teach one?
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For training to fly ...

• We need core principles about what makes for
  effective training.
• We need to evaluate training in their light
  if we want to assess impact (for stakeholders).

Training principles ...
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PRINCIPLE 1 Trainee-
Focus point Learner-centred

• So set objectives in relation to
• needs analysis
• baseline data

• Then measure success in terms of
• objectives, and
• baseline data or trend analysis

Note objectives do not always changes
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PRINCIPLE 1 Trainer-trainee-employer
So a triangle of participants
As the strength of a chain is determined by its
weakest link, so the least contribution of any
one partner becomes the maximum level of
effectiveness possible
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PRINCIPLE 2 Ladder of learning

• One-off and fragmented training experiences
  resource waste
• Develop an ongoing culture of learning
• Give certificates for competence, not attendance

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PRINCIPLE 3 proactivity

• Serving the sector ? a servant of the sector.
• Providers should offer
• Needs-driven AND needs-arousing training.
• Demand- AND supply- driven courses.
• Put the gain into train

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• In one SA needs analysis of 14 radio stations, 13
  failed to identify any need for
• journalism training,
• skills in covering poverty
• reporting local govt.

Only 3 said gender training. None said training
in media convergence. Trainers must be leaders
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PRINCIPLE 4 Process
No application within the newsroom ? Maybe
trainee didnt learn much ? Cos poor delivery or
good, but ? Poor course design ? Or reason is
- course wasnt based on needs

• Training is a journey
• - you can trace problems backwards

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Process stages
If course did meet needs? Maybe the wrong people
went on it? Or the workplace blocks all ?
Or training not in fact the solution
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Process lessons

• Front-end work
• is critical
• you cant salvage a wrong course or wrong
  trainees.

Secrets of success can also be traced through
preceding phases
In short, evaluate at all stages! Pre-training,
during, afterwards
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PRINCIPLE 5 Holism Training target A Head

• Train the brain
• information
• knowledge
• intellectual skills

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Training target B Hands

• Practice
• Skills to implement

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Target C Heart of the matter

• If you forget about attitude, your training wont
  fly.
• (You can train for media freedom ethics, for
  anti-sexism, diversity, anti-racism, etc.)

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Target D The Wallet

• The point is
• Whats the pay-off?
• Financial
• Organisational
• Job-related
• Challenge make a difference to the fulfillment
  of the clients missions

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Holistic training

• So, training should be planned and assessed in
  terms of

K nowledge A ttitude P ractice P ay-off
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PRINCIPLE 6 RLAP

• Reaction do they like it?
• Learning are they learning it?
• Application are they using it?
• Pay-off does it make a difference?

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Remember ...

• Good reaction
• ? learning
• Learning
• ? application
• Application
• ? effective pay-off
• Its a package.

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RLAP indicators of kapp

• Reaction
• Attitude
• Learning
• Knowledge
• Application
• Practice
• Combination affects Pay-off

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Recapping principles

• Golden triangle trainer,
• trainee, employer
• Ladder of learning
• Proactive
• Process
• Holistic (kapp)
• RLAP

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At last Impact Assessment
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Priorities what to select?
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Evaluation

• Begin before the beginning of a
  course
• Continue after the end.
• Remember reaction, learning, application,
  pay-off at every
  stage.
• Prioritise what to focus upon
• Results youll find out
• what works,
• what needs work.

Its the training that did it
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Fly in the ointment

• How?
• Evaluation impact assessment takes
• time, money (10?), skill, follow-up
• Needs to be against training objectives
  baseline/trend analyis BUT be open to
  unexpected findings
• Dont be dominated by findings
• Beware being too training-centred.

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Get to grips with HOW

• Questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observation
• Testing
• Other
• Output, awards,
• promotions,
• public opinion.

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Case study Southern Africa

• Stakeholders
• NSJ
• Funders
• Me
• Other trainers
• A range of interests.

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Principles _at_ work

• Research done .5 to 2.5 years after courses
• 12 courses 1996-97
• 374 individuals
• 29 responses
• Considerations
• Triangle
• KAPP-RLAP
• Proactivity
• Process
• Objectives baseline

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Case study Southern Africa

• Scoping
• Individual
• Newsroom
• Medium
• Society

• Method
• Questionnaires 58 qtns
• (incl asking for evidence)
• Quantitative qualitative

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Indicators

• Individual
• Skills (LA), confidence (R), motivation (R)
• Remuneration (A), position (A)
• Perceptions of limitations (A)
• Newsroom
• Sharing of information (L)
• Learning culture (R)
• Society
• Media freedom independence (A)
• Provoked ire (R)

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Sampling needed

• Structured representative
• Training rich/poor countries
• Media free/restricted countries
• NSJ activity concentrated
• Potential markets donor dependent
• State and private media
• Broadcast and print media
• Male and female
• Total 25 journalists (7), 6 editors

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Matrix of countries
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RLAP across scope
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Interesting findings

• 77 said performance increased from average to
  above-average

90 more motivated confident Time elapse
longer gtr impact
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Pay-off findings

• Asked for value of training received 25 500
  a day!

30 promoted or pay increase attributed to
course (40 of men, 9 women)
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Triangle findings

• Trainees rated improvement higher than their
  bosses did.
• Trainees say they circulate training materials,
  bosses differ.

60 bosses value certificate 20 of trainees
value it.
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Gender findings

• Guess who shares course materials men

or women?

• Significance
• To make impact, train more women.
• To get more women, change duration of course.

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Macro-findings

• Raised ire
• 40 private media
• 25 of public

• More impact on
• training-poor countries,
• public media.

• Newsroom conservatism as obstacle to application
  
• 75 public
• 20 private

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Unintended impact
A community of southern African journalists with
a growing regional identity
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Since a strategy to earn our stripes

• Pre-course
• Needs analysis establish baseline (R, L, A)
• 360 degree survey (triangle)
• During course
• Joint SMART kapp objectives
• Personal plan
• Daily final eval some tests (RL)
• Post-course
• Postcards email (R)
• 3 month report on plan (P)
• Utility
• Data analysis, communication, application

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Warning

• Without impact assessment, and acting on it,
• training will be discredited and rotten media
  will result.
• Get going!

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Re-cap context for IA

• Accept diverse interests and major complexities.
• Recognise principles
• Triangle
• Ladder of learning
• Proactivity
• Head, hands, heart, purse
• Process stages
• RLAP.
• Then, evaluate!
• And, initiate!

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Lots of work needed ...

• In Africa, cicada insects make a racket, but when
  you look, you cant find them!

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If training is a good thing,then lets make it
even better with serious IA
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Its rainingtraining lets be sure the crops
will grow
http//journ.ru.ac.za/staff/guy/