University Of Lucknow

Department of Education
Course- [Link]. 2021-2023
Subject- Innovations in Education
Assignment topic - Interactive Radio
Submitted to - Prof. Kiran Lata Dangwal

Submitted by – Yashwant Singh

Roll No. 54
What is Interactive Radio?
Radio is a communication technology, and uses electromagnetic waves for
transmitting the signals from places (studios, or anywhere where the programs
are producing) to other places with radio machines, which are capable of
playing radio programs. These waves travel through air and the vacuum of
space equally well, not requiring a medium of transport. Because of reaching
many people in a short time, radio is defined as a mass medium. There are more
than one definitions of radio, which are defined in its technological
infrastructure, or in its medium characteristics. In social and communication
sciences, however, the medium characteristics of radio are more important.
With highlighting this point, it can be said that radio is a medium, which sends
audible messages through its potential listeners. The producers constitute
audible messages with voices, music, and effects. In distance educational radio
broadcastings, there has to be a definitional part, which explains educational-
based presentations or programs. One-way-communication technique and
concept is the basic type for the educational of radio programs, which have no
interactivity. One-way-communication refers the program types in which the
messages only come through the potential learners and audiences. The learners
and audiences are not respectful to give (immediate) feedback for these kinds of
programs. When multi-way interactivity is included in a program, two-way-
communication takes place instead of one-way-communication. In these kinds
of programs, learners or audiences have a chance to give (immediate) feedback
to the program presenters, experts, or whoever presents the program. This
cannot be only one person. There can be two or more people presenting the
program, and persons send their feedbacks to these persons. Finally, interactive
radio can be defined based on a radio programming concept and technique,
which has two-way communication among presenters and audiences. Two-way
communication allows to have immediate messages from audiences. Interactive
educational radio is defined as the radio concept bringing together instructors,
learners, resources, experts etc. together even if they have not been at the same
place and same time.

Educational Radio
The use of radio for educational purposes began with the BBC‘s schools
broadcasting services as far back as in 1924. The first school broadcast in India
were commissioned in 1937, and regular broadcasts began in 1938 from All
India Radio (AIR) in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras. Subsequently,
various educational radio projects over AIR have been carried out. The primary
channels of AIR continue their school broadcasts, but by and large these have
tended to be random, one-way information-communication programmes, or
didactic and fairly dull lessons in which the teacher talks and students listen.
They have not concerned themselves with the actual quality of classroom
teaching and learning. Nor have they been held accountable for the achievement
of specific learning objectives. This is largely the reason why radio fell into
disrepute as an education technology. There is no doubt, however, that amongst
all the available means of communication, radio has the maximum reach in
India, as in most developing countries. While television is rapidly expanding in
urban and rural areas, access to radio networks and ownership of radios is far
more widespread, as 97% of our population can access radio stations. Moreover,
attempts were started globally in the early 1970s to apply major developments
in applied learning theory, particularly active learning methods, to educational
radio for schools, leading to the development of Interactive Radio Instruction
(IRI).
 Choosing Radio
The interactive radio was based on certain assumptions regarding the strength
and limitations of radio as a unisensory medium, as given below.

 Radio broadcast has the inherent strength of outreach to the masses and is
an affordable medium for both the distance education institutions and the
students.

 Used at the local level it can cater to the area-specific needs of the
students and involve them in selecting problem areas for discussion.

 The decentralized approach of local broadcasting can develop a sense of

intimacy and warmth between the resource persons and the students.

 The disadvantaged groups—poor, physically and visually challenged, and

women—who find it difficult to attend or participate in face-to-face
 academic counseling sessions can be reached by the interactive radio
counseling.

 The use of local languages for interaction can help the students
understand difficult concepts discussed in their courses and can motivate
them to pursue their studies.

 As interactive radio is designed in a decentralized way, follow-up

interaction (either face-to-face or by telephone) with the resource persons
and among the students can be strengthened. This can motivate the
students to form self-help groups.

Potential for wide-scale diffusion of

relevant content and pedagogy
The pedagogy of IRI is more deliberate than active learning alone. Given here
are some of the features unique to IRI that were used by the CLR to deliver
relevant content and sound pedagogy on a large scale.

Reaching a well-designed curriculum for a given subject area, directly to

elementary schools

Through IRI, we could deliver a complete curriculum, in the form of a course

for English communication skills for Classes 5,6 and 7. A well-designed
sequence of graded 15-minute lessons for each class, could be accessed by
teachers and students at the press of a button 3 times a week. The radio course
for spoken English consisted of about 80 lessons per year, per class, and there
were 60 lessons per year, per class, for reading and writing.

Turning a limitation of radio to pedagogical advantage

Teachers and students are used to pages of a textbook that can be turned back
for review as needed. Lessons on audio cassettes and CDs can also be played as
often as desired, whereas a radio lessons is heard only once. This limitation
calls for ensuring repetition and clarity within the instructional design and
sequence – an opportunity for curriculum developers to build in frequent
reviews, i.e. the important principle of ―spiralling‖ necessary for effective
learning, together with small amounts of continuous informal learning
assessment and feedback for the classroom teachers.

Implementing interactive pedagogical processes

Teaching and learning through radio is interactive when students actually

interact, during the radio lesson broadcast, with the radio teacher, the radio
characters, their own classroom teacher, and with one another. During a typical
15-minute CLR radio lesson, students interact several times. They respond to
question prompts through verbal and physical responses. Activities to be carried
out in pairs or small groups are set up by the radio teacher. Short pauses in the
broadcast give students enough time to think and respond. For the CLR‘s radio
lessons for spoken English, this proves to be an ideal process to ensure that
students in rural areas and urban ‗bastis‘ regularly hear conversational English
within a bilingual setting, and actually speak in English during the interactive
broadcasts. In the programme we later produced for reading and writing skills,
the audio scripts and accompanying reader-cum-activity books focused on
reading with meaning. The interactive and more constructivist methods we used
in this programme stressed the importance of the personal response of learners
to a given text, of using open-ended questioning techniques and accepting
multiple correct answers.

Involving the classroom teacher as integral to the radio pedagogy and

providing concurrent teacher development through radio lessons

In the structure of IRI lessons, the radio or distant teacher is the main teacher
who directs the learning activities during timed pauses in each lesson. At the
same time, facilitating each of these actual interactions is the role of the teacher
present in the classroom. She/he provides individual attention during the lesson,
and follow-up support after each lesson, which could include periods of further
teaching according to the interactive methods modelled through the radio.
Consequently, the distant teacher and classroom teacher are partners in the
teaching process. Moreover, an ancillary outcome is that the daily radio contact
time with classroom teachers serves as a subtle form of inservice training in the
adoption of learner-centred, activity-based and constructivist teaching methods.

Engaging learners through relevant and lively content

IRI gives the opportunity to equate learning to real life. The setting of lessons
within situations, dramas and stories that echo the real lives of children, and the
use of believable radio characters engage student-listeners complete attention.
Cultural relevance can be brought to content. Secondly, radio has the advantage
of being the ―medium of the imagination‖. Student-listeners cannot see, and
therefore can imagine, a wide range of people, places and action-filled events on
which the instructional episodes are based. In the CLR‘s bilingual radio
programmes, stories, dialogue, songs – all important ingredients of language
teaching – give opportunities to consciously weave in themes related to human
values, social awareness and gender sensitivity, so that besides learning English,
student-listeners are involved in evaluating dilemmas, making judgements and
expressing their own opinions using their first language.
 Conclusion
IR is a project with bright future. It has the potential to contribute to increased
access to an additional source of education and to improve the quality of
learning. However, it should be implemented with caution, taking into
consideration all the challenges and problems. Much more needs to be done in
the area of designing, planning, implementing, and evaluating the IR sessions.

To learn effectively from television and radio broadcasts, students should

prepare in advance by reading the material supplied and by skimming the
relevant sections of it. They can greatly increase the benefit they obtain from
sessions by spending time afterward writing down the main points they learned.
With radio they can take notes as they listen, but with TV it is often hard to do
more than watch. Learning from TV and radio is transformed if students can
record the broadcasts and replay them in their own time and as often as they
wish.

The IR can be made effective by

 setting the right environment at both the teaching and learning ends; this
can be achieved by catering to the specific learning needs of the students;

 involving talented people, trained and with a positive attitude, in

developing and delivering the IR sessions; the right people can overcome
many obstacles provided they design, know, develop, and evaluate IR;
and

 Defining objectives clearly and specifying strategies to achieve them.

The support services should be systematically planned and implemented. The
students reported that IR sessions demand study of particular topics, whereas
face-to-face counselling demands study of other topics to gain the optimum
benefit from the counselling sessions. On the other hand, teleconferencing
sessions expect the students to study specific topics before participating in the
sessions. The examination system and assignment questions demand that
students follow a different path of preparation. In such a situation, at times they
find themselves confused. The students stated that they decide their plan of
action depending on the spare time available for study, to work on assignment
questions, and pass term-end examinations. Thus there is a need to coordinate
all these processes.