Extension education is a continuous educational process to provide knowledge to the rural people about the improved practices in a convincing manner. The research in extension education should aim at identifying appropriate methods, tools and techniques for the field extension functionaries who in turn could utilize it for accelerating the change process in the society. The Programmed Instruction (PI) is a self-instructional material, in which learners work through the programmed material by themselves at their own speed and after each step, test their comprehension by answering a question as well, they can find the correct answer immediately. The PI has proved superior method over conventional methods in educating learners of varying groups such as age, sex, education, physical and mental capabilities, positions in the job, different subjects like science, mathematics, engineering, medicine, nursing, counseling. Its utility is unexplored in educating agricultural subject for farmers and extension functionaries. Hence, an attempt was made to develop the PI on agricultural technology, ‘climate change, its impact, mitigation and adaptation strategies in agriculture’. On experimentation, the results indicated that, PI is a better method over Lecture method in educating agriculture subject through its influence on cognitive and affective domains of extension functionaries.

Programmed Instruction, frames, cognitive domain, affective domain, reinforcement, learning, effectiveness

PI has the multitude of positive effects. The reinforcement of learning occurs twice in the process of learning in PI through answering the questions and by the correct answer provided for cross checking. By using PI the individuals can learn the subject matter in their own place and the speed of learning depending on their ability. Therefore, the uniform learning occurs among individuals having varying abilities. PI can indeed be very beneficial to education for both learners and teachers. Therefore, it can be developed and used as an effective tool teaching all categories of learners and for several circumstances. The findings of the study will be helpful to the Developmental Departments, State Agricultural Universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, Commodity Boards and NGOs, to educate the staff working in their organisations and their clients by transforming technical literature/implementation procedures etc., into the form of PI material. Due to limitation of time and resources, PI material has been developed on one agricultural technology on climate change, its impact, mitigation and adaptation strategies in agriculture. Hence, the results cannot be generalized in the same way for the other subjects. The investigation has been conducted on the extension functionaries and therefore, the results cannot be generalized for the other users of PI.

Manjula N., Shivashankar M. and Bharath Kumar T.P. (2022). Critical Evaluation of Methodological Aspects in Developing the Programmed Instruction Material on Agricultural Technologies. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(4a): 667-671.