Multimedia support for extension trainers in developing countries

A key issue for extension trainers in developing countries is the lack of e ffective educational media to support their work at the farm level. This is sue has become even more acute with the recent trend in approaches to exten sion training which emphasise the role of local farmers in determining thei r own development and training activities. At the same time, a survey of na tional agricultural organisations in developing countries has shown that th e media and audio-visual production centres focus largely on the production of general media material. A more effective approach would be for these ce ntres to train extension workers in the production of their own audio-visua l material. This paper describes the development and application of two interactive mul timedia CDROM's for training extension workers in the production of audiovi sual material. It reports on a series of recent case studies undertaken in Sri Lanka which trialed the CDROM in various training scenarios. The result s indicate that distance education utilising multimedia courseware alone is not feasible at present. However, a more integrative approach to the use o f multimedia technology and conventional training methods is shown to produ ce a number of substantive improvements in this context.