30 July 2007
Today’s media landscape characterises rapid changes and growing competition where not only the training needs of the broadcast industry have become enormous but also the trainers need to be creative and innovative if they are to respond effectively to the human resource developmental needs in their organisations. Training concepts, content and techniques need to be adapted to suit the demands of an ever changing dynamic media environment.
Against this background, the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) and UNESCO recently implemented a Training of Trainers workshop to provide professional broadcasters and personnel from media NGOs and associations in Central Asia with the knowledge and skills that they need to carry out effective training in their organizations.The one week training workshop was hosted by the Khabar Agency at the International Institute for Modern Policy on Logistics in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Nine media professionals participated. Four were from Kazakhstan. Three television journalists/producers were from Khabar Agency in Almaty, and a media trainer from Internews. The three participants from Tajikistan were from media NGOs. The two participants from Kyrgyzstan were both from media-related NGOs. Practically all the participants had experience in working as journalists/producers or as media NGO staff and generally had a high degree of awareness of training needs and methodologies.
The curriculum focused on training methodology, and related topics in management and organizational communication and training. The training was implemented through Russian interpretation. Experimential learning techniques were employed to promote collaborative learning through team based projects. The participants were able to grasp the fundamental areas in training and the learning process was enhanced by the diversity of the group, in terms of their professional experiences in media.
As outcomes the participants presented structured and viable training projects that can be implemented in their countries. It was recommended that training of capacity building programmes of this nature be organised with higher learning organizations such as universities and broadcasting training departments and NGO’s so that not only the academicians and practitioners in the broadcast industry can complement each other but also develop curriculum which could prove as a fruitful attempt in building-up a compendium of trained trainers in the Central Asia.
The workshop was led by Dr.David H.Mould, Professor of Telecommunications and Associate Dean, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University and Ms Manil Cooray, Programme Manager of AIBD; Mr Sergey Karpov of UNESCO Almaty Cluster Office was their co-trainer. Ms Inkar Miryakupova of Khabar’s International Relations Department served as the interpreter.
Permanent link: http://en.unesco.kz/aibd-unesco-train-media-trainers