Implementing Participatory Design Approach to Generate Career Awareness among Agricultural University Students

Abstract

Community radio is rapidly emerging as an effective tool of development communication. Community participation is a key to the success of community radio. It requires formal research on need assessment and audience analysis which is lacking in context of most of the community radio stations of the country. Moreover, message designing and programme production should involve the key stakeholders as it has been explicitly reported in multiple researches. The present study was taken among undergraduate students of G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar. Participatory programmes were designed, developed and broadcasted among the students regarding career avenues. It was found that the Community Radio can be utilised for increasing awareness of different career avenues among the students and can act as a platform for motivating students. The appropriate amalgamation of radio formats along with inspiring real life stories in radio programme production can help out in making it interesting. The outcomes of the study revealed that radio, if accountable to the people through involving them in assessment of information needs and participatory designing of programmes, serves them to pinpoint their problems and get solutions. If development message is generated by outsiders, it will not be of enough significance to the people, and sustainability would be problematic. Participation entails involvement in which the people (beneficiaries) critically influence the decisions about how, where and in what form they want to acquire benefits of development. Participation further means dialogue that is based on people sharing their own perceptions of problems besetting them, offering their options and ideas, and having the opportunity to make decisions or recommendations to solve them.