Transacting knowledge when there are no schools during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria: the SENSE-transactional radio instruction experience

The argument has been canvassed about the deployment of appropriate technologies during a pandemic such as COVID-19, and the pace with which several countries have embraced such digital learning pedagogy. Inherently, it was subsumed that despite this super role importance, virtual teaching cannot be replaced by physical contact, but may only play supplementary roles, and establish a strong relationship between teachers and students (Maity et al. 2021). This helps, but accentuates earlier studies (Agarwala et al. 2022) that deploying technologies under the TRI approaches can eliminate the possibilities of religious, cultural, social, and economic bias between the students and the teachers since such technologies are impersonal. Thus, when identified threats are immediately addressed, technologies channeled through TRI inadvertently improve students’ overall educational performance by reflecting paradigm shifts in educational models, cultural heritages, experiences, and perspectives. (Gay 2002; Goldman 2018; Maity et al. 2021).

TRI-induced tech-modeled learning is argued to help strengthen developmental ideologies and the effectual participation of stakeholders in places where there are no schools (Jacob and Ensign 2020). However, we cannot discountenance the importance of the blended approach since no study has established the potential of only TRI in solely achieving learning goals to the exclusion of other pedagogies. Our study focused on the premise that the integration of SENSE ideologies serves as a valuable supplement to the TRI model. Furthermore, our observations indicate that the implementation of blended learning, as proposed by the (Geta and Olango 2016) study, can greatly improve students’ writing skills in courses. As a result, the adoption of a blended learning approach to reinforce the benefits of the TRI model in a highly effective manner is further canvassed. Technology would always be a decimator for either the blended or TRI approaches resulting in displacement as presumed by the technological determinism discourse of Marshall McLuhan, while users may become too media inclined as argued by the media equation theorists within the convulsed cybernetic tradition milieu (Griffin 2012).

We have also observed in line with Maity et al. (2022) that opportunity and capacity to adapt these digital approaches is one thing, and adaptability to the new paradigm and level of virtual engagements is another, especially as it has to do with the new mode of tech-driven teaching and learning in the face of insurgency and pandemic. Adaptability could be influenced by internet penetration, issues of electricity, mobile network, internet glitches, and level of available income to spare for such endeavors, especially in countries where there are no definite policies in this regard as well as the willingness of the key players to get in tune with the new approaches. For success to be recorded, there must be a conscious blend between opportunity and capacity on one hand and adaptability on the other.

Earlier findings suggest most of the radio technology-driven programs have well-defined educational objectives, production, and presentational procedures consistent with best practices. They also would normally fall short in terms of capabilities for interaction among listeners, moderators, and guests (Agarwala et al. 2022), and this impinges on cognition, attitude formation, and behavioral modifications (Vanderplank 2010; Patrick 2018). Nonetheless, intensity in the use of technologies would enhance the potential across media ecologies (Haddad and Draxler 2002).

The implications for technological uses are also pulsated on several levels. These include the need for teachers to know that online and blended learning may be substituted for regular instruction and as such they should be empowered to become digitally inclined in all situations as the need arises. Empowerment could come in the form of exposing them to “computer-supported collaborative learning, educational games, and computer-assisted instruction delivered into homes” (Topping et al. 2022). Suggesting that a blended approach still hold some more advantage, especially in developing countries.

In the northeast of Nigeria, the SENSE-TRI program proposed several benchmarks, set goals, and evaluated, and reevaluation the parameters to accommodate new challenges and legwork. This process of appraising the extent of work directed at deepening literacy and numeracy skills among certain categories of persons is expected to benefit from the deployment of radio technologies. While the rampaging COVID-19 is seen as a key decimator in this study and to all things that had been deemed normal before the moment, teachers, who are the major stakeholders, must align with instructional strategies, challenges, support, and motivation (Karam 2020; Kirshner 2020; Rasmitadila et al. 2020) as well as the readiness of technology, wound around the humanist curriculum in delivery.

Pedagogical contents are driven by the butt of technology. Also, the effective integration of available technologies into the pedagogical ecology of the people is considered more sacrosanct and impactful since it deals with the nuances of the people (Harris et al. 2010; Obukoadata et al. 2020). The integration of radio technology which has been argued to be immensely powerful among rural dwellers, is also quite instructive. Such integration is a product of the teachers’ concurrent knowledge and the goal of the curriculum content, expressive in meeting the learning needs and educational goals of the stakeholders. Similarly, a designed media literacy education curriculum is expected to focus on specific media analysis skills of succinctly identifying the main ideas, purpose, and structural features of a broadcast. Thus, an enriched integration of media literacy skills into the curriculum is likely to yield optimal results (Hobbs and Frost, 1998; Ilboudo et al. 2018; Hodges et al. 2020). This investigation is based on the notion that technological methods are not fundamentally novel but rather an evolution of the various educational aspects of traditional in-person instruction. It is posited that these methods provide increased versatility in completing tasks, foster independence in learners, and promote greater self-control as pupils can adhere to their motivational inclinations (Topping et al. 2022).

Instances are evident in the 1993 Bolivian experiment, where, instead of just focusing on the young caregivers, parents, child development specialists, and health educators in the learning cycle, more funds were deployed towards radio-based instructional programs (Bosch and Crespo, 1995); the development of geography knowledge of students (Caldis 2018) as well as delivering educational services to youths and children in crisis environments (Driscoll 2010; Carlson and JBS International 2013; Education Development Center 2019).

Globally, radio has been argued to be very definitive in mobilizing for change. A Nicaraguan experience in the early 80 s proved this assertion when deployed to helping the students understand and appreciate mathematics through the use of textbooks and radio treatments. This had significant positive effects on the achievements of the students even though it is not suggestive enough for either textbooks or radio instructions to be solely sufficiently powerful to induce this result (Jamison et al. 1981; Johnson and Aragon 2003). One stronghold of the radio tool in providing learning engagement is that it is the voice of the poor and can help boost development (Madamombe 2005), enrich the learning styles of the recipients who are immersed in its use for other things other than learning and thus strike a new fancy for them (McGovern et al. 2017). Radio also remains a powerfully cheap medium of communication over distant places because of its ubiquitous nature in crisis periods globally (Uduma and Obukoadata 2016; Geta and Olango 2016; Okeke et al. 2020; Ullah 2020). Despite these strong points, the focus should not be to institutionalize interactive radio, but to institutionalize interactivity which helps provide a marked departure from the classroom environment (Olsson 1994). This is necessary, as, despite the significant potential of radio as an educational broadcasting tool, awareness and utilization for the same purpose by a segment of society is still low. There is, therefore, the need to institutionalize the interactivity of the interactive radio (Olumorin et al. 2018) as well as negotiate effective teaching and learning via a classroom away from the classrooms, and pedagogy away from pedagogies (Crabtree and Sapp 2004).

TRI has been established to be effective across cultures and regions of several European cities (Elliott and Lashley 2017), what about the Nigerian north-east? Although some regions would present diverse challenges, the expected goals are nonetheless the same across processes (Kozma, 1991; Scott-Kassner, 1999; Gass 2002). Cultural deployment to the SENSE-TRI program is, therefore, not without distraction from this, and therefore, necessary to ensure that the SENSE-TRI is still relevant in meeting set goals and visions.