Building content on water quality for scale

Our drinking water is fraught with quality issues like chemicals, microplastics, excessive minerals, bacteria, and other contaminants, which tend to be local in nature, and require mitigation action at the local level. Frontline workers in these localities require an understanding of how to assess the local water quality and what steps to take to address issues that are discovered in water. This requires capacity building and availability of simplified information on water quality problems and solutions.

INREM Foundation works to empower field functionaries from government and non-government institutions with knowledge and capacities to enable them to find solutions to water quality problems in their area. Doing this has meant exploring innovations in training and learning methods. We will explain some of them  in this article.  

Reusable Learning Objects

Water quality is a vast subject and can often be complex in nature. Hence, simplifying the information and breaking it down into the smallest bits possible is critical to the knowledge dissemination process. This ensures that learners’ needs are prioritised and they are not overwhelmed in the learning process.

To achieve this, INREM follows a concept of reusable learning objects (RLO) to design its content. We focus on understanding the audience and their needs when creating content for them.  The safe water learning cards, which have found immense popularity in water quality training across the country, have been developed using this approach.

Characteristics of RLOs

The different characteristics of RLOs in the context of training of frontline workers on water quality are described below.
 
1.

Learner-centric

2. 

Atomised

3.

Flexible and customisable

4.

Modular

5.

Interactive

6.

Accessible and shareable at scale

Based on our experiences, here is a summary of tips for making online content for training of frontline workers:
●      Create modular and customizable content that can be used anywhere in the country
●      Use virtual field demos, videos, case studies depending on the learners’ needs
●      Publish the content online and make it available to everyone
●      Use photos with creative commons license
●      Acknowledge and give credit to people who contribute content, photos, videos, etc.
 
By simplifying information it can be used to explain complex, interconnected topics related to water quality such as climate change. Further, innovative approaches like gamification, graphic novels and newer technologies are being explored to make virtual learning not only engaging but also scalable.