Lack of C4D modules in University courses

Lack of C4D Modules in University courses

So true, unfortunately. In almost every NGO I have visited, in many parts of the world, big and small, there is a lack of communication capacity. Technical/professional expertise is present—depending on the NGOs’ focus, it could be lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc., but communication expertise is not and I have seen so much money wasted due to this absence.

Jyotika Ramaprasad
Professor, Journalism and Media Management
School of Communication
University of Miami

Dear all,

The Communication for Development (ComDev) team at Malmö University, Sweden, has been offering blended learning online education since 2000. Since we are currently accepting applications for our part-time MA and 15 credit 'Advances in ComDev' module, comprehensive information is available on our ComDev portal (http://wpmu.mah.se/comdev/2017/03/20/apply-for-comdev-malmo-ma-program-…). As Europe's oldest and probably one of the world's largest ComDev programs we have built our 'Glocal Classroom' with accessible technology and flexible approaches. We currently have active partnerships in South Africa, Australia (Flinders), Canada (Guelph) and the UK (Leicester).

Our solid academic foundation come with one challenge:Since 2009 non-EU citizens have to pay fees for studies in Sweden. EU citizens and Swedish residents still study for free, but we are always looking for options to make our program accessible. Since sida is not offering educational support and the scholarship situation is less than optimal in Sweden, we are struggling to make ComDev as open and accessible as it could be. However, we do cooperate with UNICEF on our 'Advances in ComDev' course and organizations can sponsor participants for this course. We are also taking our 'Glocal Classroom' on the road regularly and try to collaborate with local students, alumni and organizations.

So if you are an educator or practiioner like Wendy or Charles, an academic or student we always love to hear from you. The idea of a truly global ComDev program that brings togethers some of the institutions mentioned here would be a dream and I am always looking for ideas on how to move this vision closer to reality!

Tobias

---

Tobias Denskus, PhD.
Senior Lecturer & MA Program Coordinator Communication for Development
Konst, kultur och kommunikation, K3 | School of Arts and Communication, K3
Malmö högskola | Malmö University
205 06 Malmö, Sweden
ComDev portal
Personal blog
Latest research
ComDev on Facebook

Re: Lack of C4D Modules in University Courses

Dear All,

this is an interesting discussion. At the University of Adelaide I ran an undergraduate course for a few years as part of the Bachelor of Development Studies called 'Information Communication Technologies for Development. The main issue we had with the course was always numbers, it never drew enough student interest (amazingly) for it to be sustainable. We generally need around 100 students per course for them to be viable and ICT4D would attract around 40. This lead to the course being removed. It may be that it would sit more naturally at the Masters level.

Given the nature of the topic it does lend itself to the development of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). This could potentially be slotted in to lots of different courses and could be of use to the development sector more broadly. With the universities network that we have via comminit.com I was wondering who would be keen to think about a multi-institutional partnership to put up a MOOC on C4D? It would require some thought on curriculum and a division of labour in terms of specific lectures/modules but it might something that is worth thinking about and I'm sure we could get someone to fund it. Working it through EDX would be the way to go, check it out. 

Just an idea.

Best, Andrew

Professor Andrew Skuse
Head, Dept. of Anthropology and Development Studies
Anthropology and Development Studies  
University of Adelaide

Universities and Communication and Media Development

This discussion thread confirms my own understanding that academically based C4D training remains sadly lacking the world 'round.  I am happy to say that my School supported the establishing of a 1 year Master of Science degree in Globalization and Development Communication here at Temple University,in Philadephia, beginning 2014. We are a small program. After three years we have attained our targeted full size of 12 students per year.  Interested persons can find more information here.

I'm quite sure there are very few such programs in the U.S. The Ohio University has a masters program in development communication, and it is the only other dedicated program that I know of, though there are programs that overlap, such as programs in health communication that do work in low-income and rapidly changing environments and quite a few individual classes at various universities.

I'll support Tobias from Malmo and say that the Malmo online program has excellent staff and has been doing good work for a number of years now. The program here at Temple, is brick and morter only, for the time being.

Finally, there is an ongoing attempt to constitute a an "International Network of Programs in Communication for Development and Social Change."  They've had at least 2-3 meetings in South/Central America to coordinate collaboration.  The network goes by the name RECECAMBIO, and has a website.

P.S. Greetings to my friends Wendy and Silvia.

Tom Jacobson

This is a great conversation and just in times to share the struggles am encountering!

I am myself an MA Graduate of Malmo C4D course (hello Tobias!) and since last year I have been in touch on and off with Sciense Po Paris' School of International Affairs . It has been a very frustating process of "yes we love what you offer but we don't know where to fit you" when we discuss repeating the course I taught last year, "An introduction to C4D".

My experience is that in that school there is only a vague understanding of Communication work generally (I mean Insitutionnal Communication) and no understanding of Communication for Development or Communication for Social Change (which seems to be a term that is more engaging to Northern based universities, or at least to Sciences Po).

My feeling is that indeed C4D is transversal to a variety of MAs that the School teaches: Human Rights, Development, Environment, Security. They feel it is a transversal field of importance because they can see the relevance with regards to job opportunities for their Graduates. But because they don't understand the relevance of C4D at policy making level for instance and more an acitivity of "on the ground programmatic work" they don't know how and where to fit it.

So to take this discussion further:

- I think there is indeed a need for advocacy towards universities on C4D

- I understand that Westminster University (Jackie Davies) is also teaching C4D as part of the Masters in Development and the Center for Communication and Social Change (Prof Pradip Thomas) at Queensland University (Australia seems to be super active!).

- It might be worth talking to UNICEF as the main UN body in charge of promoting C4D in the UN family and see whether they might be interested in working on an initiative towards Universities.

I'd be very happy to join if there was a group that came together to take this issue forwards in the future.

Bestest,

Myriam Horngren

Advocacy and Communications Consultant

Re: Universities and Communication for Development

Hi, nice to see an interesting topic being discussed and shared between and among devcom professionals and practitioners. Sometime ago when I joined a group of communication people talked about this in an FAO gathering sometime in 2014 or so (with Gumucio-Dagron, James Dean, Ricardo Ramirez, Obregon, Bruce, Silvia Balit,Mario Acunzo, Helen Humbly, Sarah Cardey, Elske VanderFliert, Rico Lie  among others), I already mentioned the fact that part of  mainstreaming devcom in development work is by producing formally trained devcom professionals. That is, producing people who have formal training or who have graduated with formal degrees in devcom. Likened to a "hospital", we thought that we just cannot have "para-doctors" or "para-nurses" take care of running the devcom job; we need "professional doctors" as well.

We are happy to share that the College of Development Communication at the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) is doing just that. We offer BS, MS and PhD in Development Communication with complete curriculum for each. We are turning out about 180-100 graduates for BS and 4-8 for MS and PhD every year. And based on our tracer study our graduates have been in high demand and are well placed in government, non-government jobs as well as in UN projects and organizations. While we continue to provide non-formal trainings, we are dedicated to providing formal degrees to keep a stream of devcom professionals who we expect would help beef up the current work being done by practitioners on ground.

Through FAO's effort, we are working together now with 4 other universities (Netherlands, Guelph, Reading, Australia) in strengthening research to build up the body of knowledge in devcom or Communication for Development (ComDev as FAO would call it). This we, believe is important in building up both the practice and the profession. We believe as well that theory-driven methods and practices will make the job more strategic and effective in the long run. 

We will be happy to share our curriculum, and to be part of this interest, and to also learn from great people with wealth of expertise like you. Our programs are work in progress.    

   
Cleofe S. Torres, PhD
Professor and former Dean
College of Development Communication,
University of the Philippines Los Baños
College, Laguna 4031 Philippines

Re: Communication, Media, Development and Universities

Hi Caroline - Greetings from India!

In the new race for design of development solutions in the present environment of connectivity, unfortunately C4D is one of the most under-rated domains. As a practising organization, we at ZMQ believe that C4D is not only the first step in the ‘D’ solution design but the most important steps. Indeed there is a lack of courses and professionals who are trained in the domain specially seeing the great need and now the new opportunity of d-C4D.

At ZMQ we are fortunate to be working closely with Department of Development Communication & Extension (DCE) at Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi. There is another institution around in our part of the world, AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia University, which has a Master’s program, but we have not worked with them yet. But is is not enough for serving 1.2 billion (or at least 600 million, who need them the most).

We feel that C4D professionals are the social engineers who have the skill to design appropriate development solutions. There is an urgent need with institutions step this up, have more courses and programs, online resources, MOOCs etc. It is also important that more and more students are motivated to take up this as professions and not take it up as a last recourse. I think we are not doing enough on these lines.  It is opportune time for young professionals to take this to serve & lead development programs and even setup new enterprises with the new opportunity that exists in space of d-C4D. Above all it is the unreached people of the world need them the most, to develop new bottom-up designs and not us designing their solution sitting in our drawing rooms.

I am sharing here with you the brief brochure on d-C4D (@ZMQ... it is not an advertisement :) ): http://www.zmq.in/dC4D.pdf

Thanks for your patience

Subhi

It is indeed wonderful to hear of programs at universities but they still appear to be few and far between. I tried to institute one at the doctoral level in my university but given that health communication is the big topic of the day--it has funding and health is a major concern around the world--it has morphed into a health communication program (this is not a criticism, just a statement of what happened).

There is a need for a program that speaks to the importance of, to the theory and practice of, and to the needed skills in communication for social change, from the macro level societal to the micro level individual perspective. A tall order but necessary, I believe. But the fact remains that it is the corporate sector jobs that pay well and students choose to go that way--so both recruitment and placement can be a problem for such a program. Still, we must keep trying, and I plan to do so, even though it may be a lonely path!

Dear All, 

I will be echoing previous commenters if i said that this conversation is long overdue. As a young straight out of an African student, it was hard to find a African Univeristy in Southern Africa that offered communication for development as a full course and not as an elective. I faced this challenge when i was first applying for University in 2010 for a 2011 January academic year. This led me to having to do a double major course from the University of Namibia. My undergraduate first major was in Media Studies and my second major was in Geography and Environmental Studies just so i could have some sort of wholistic view of some sort of C4D. It is to be noted that my selection of my two majors where mostly welcomed with perplaxing remarks from friends and fellow classmates when they often questioned what i would end up working as. This would sometimes concern me but i would always see that as an opportunity to educate them on firstly environmental communication and also on communication for development.  

After complementing my undergraduate studies in 2014, I wanted to pursue C4D at post graduate level but again there was no University in Southern Africa that offered it. As a result, I went for a Master in Environmental Education from Rhodes University in South Africa. Now, being well read and being the author of my own research i decided to shape my study in such a way that it would give me experience in the field of C4D and at the same time in community learning. As a result, my research was around networked learning and expansion into a radio programming on rainwater harvesting in promoting food security among rural small holder farmers and homestead food growers. Despite using education theoretical frameworks i tried by all means to further use a participatory communication approach through using a stimulated radio listening club model as my tool. This was done so that i could deliberately read more on communication for development and have some sort of experience in it. I have since finished my masters' and i will be graduating with a distinction in my thesis from Rhodes University in South Africa next month.

My point is that, due to the lack of C4D courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in Southern African Universities is causing students to become more creative in their course selection combination just so they can attain what they wish to pursue as a career. It really takes a lot for one to actually think and chase after their dreams. Many give up and only a few find means to pursue what they long for. So, having C4D courses wouldn't be a bad idea. 

Chisala

One of my comments seems to have got lost so I will briefly reiterate. I tried to establish a communication for social change doctoral program at my institution that had an international orientation and included theory, practice and skills--these in a manner in which the macro level situation such as structures and norms of society, policy, etc., as well as micro level individual level beliefs, attitudes and behavior were included. I did not want the idea of understanding cultures and the locus of decision making to get lost due to the rather larger or sometimes sole focus on BCC rather than SBCC. In some parts of the world, in many actually, the S is more important than the B. The program at my institution has morphed into a health communication program, very important into its own right given the huge rise in the deserved attention to health.

But i feel the loss of and need for a program that was more socio-structural and global in orientation. My hope is to still do something, possibly at the master's level, but given the unstoppable advance of the market and corporations, where the money resides in such largesse, both recruitment and placement are difficult for CFSC. At the same time, the need is immense. So while the road may be lonely, I hope to traverse it.

Hello,

In Higher School of Communication and Media Studies (ESCS) – Lisbon we have two curricular units (Communication in the Public Interest and Public Relations in Civil Society Organizations) in Public Relations and Corporate Communication and one curricular unit (Public Communication Campaigns) in our master of Public Relations Strategic Management where we talk about Communication for Development and Social Change. And in last years, more than 10 students made master thesis about this subject.

Last year we organize a 72h course in partnership with Portuguese Platform of NGDOs about Communication for Development and, as a result of this course, we will publish a book.

Thank you.

Best regards,

César Neto

I have been following this conversation with some interest. It reminds me of a long-running debate in journalism. Who makes better journalists- graduates from schools of journalism/mass media, with no other subject matter expertise or the old-style journalists trained in a relevant subject such as History (Seymour Hersh) or Political Science (Robert Fisk)?

Similarly, who makes better C4D experts; those trained exclusively in development communication or subject matter specialists in health or agriculture? During my work, I have seen some brilliant communication practititoners among subject matter specialists, but rarely among those trained just in communication/C4D. I think it is best if C4D courses remained "embedded" (like some war journalists) within larger subject matter teaching rather than as standalone programs.

This is such a rich discussion. In Nepal, the premier public health institution (Dept of community medicine and public health at the Institute of Medicine/ Tribhuvan University affiliate) has a MHPE (Master's in Health Promotion and Education) course which is been around for about 5 years. It is made for MPH but for those interested in health promotion. The curriculum reflects this. The base is similar to the MPH degree but then focuses more on communication in the 2nd year. I think this is a great start. The health communication unit under the Ministry of Health was a key partner in getting this collaboration started as they saw the existing and future gap in personnel with the knowledge to take on health communcation in the localities across Nepal which is not even more important as the political structure in Nepal shifts to a more decentralized one.

Health communication is part of the curriculum in health education institutions in Nepal but definitely there is a much room for improvement. I think the core issue is how health promotion/ communication has been viewed, conintues to be viewed: ie. IEC which is thought of as an afterthought.  As the important contribution of health promotion gets highlighted, the weightage of health communication will hopefully rise. Health communication being seen as a profession, with networks of professionals, academics talking, sharing with each other, advocating for the need to addres this is necessary.

I am not sure whether a focused degree on health communication or embedded courses is better. I myself am someone with a social sciences and public health academic background working in the field of health communication. My journey has been learning by doing over the years. My social science background definitely helped me understand the intricacies of human behavior and subsequently health communication. I think the importance is in first getting the basics and then applying them. But continuous learning and application is key. I am still learning. 

Dear All,

thanks for the interesting responses. There seems to be a decent amount of enthusiasm for the MOOC idea and in this respect can I ask that anyone who is interested in pursuing this e-mail me directly on andrew.skuse@adelaide.edu.au or andrewskuse@yahoo.com and we can get a list-serve together. Communicating through comminit.com is a bit cumbersome as I seem to get the same e-mail 3 or 4 times.

I've floated the idea with UNICEF C4D to gauge their interest and if a suitable curriculum could be worked up I can envisage a MOOC that offered a group of international experts delivering on a wide curricula that could help plug knowledge gaps at multiple levels, i.e. NGOS, donors, multilateral and so on. It would help democratise C4D knowledge and in turn help raise it's profile.

best, Andrew

 
Professor Andrew Skuse
Head, Dept. of Anthropology and Development Studies
University of Adelaide

Hi there...

Communication for development cuts across all disciplines. Stand alone treatment of communication for development is problematic because communication is always in “communion” with the other. That means it necessarily needs context
Development is complex and has million components to it, and communication is at the heart of it. It is the political economy of communication that matters. Please check our program in international communication.

 
Basilio

Basilio G. Monteiro, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research
Associate Professor
Director, Graduate Program
International Communication

Senior Fellow, Vincentian Center for Church and Society

From the large number of substantive contributions to this forum it is clear that there is a thirst for some specific actions related to communication for development, media development, social and behavioural change in University settings. Huge thanks to everyone who has contributed and to the large number of people in the network who have been following this dialogue. 

Can I suggest that we move from analysis and critique to some form of action that will contribute to redressing some of the issues raised. From that perspective: 

1. If you are interested in being part of a group that will work together to develop and implement strategies to expand and improve the relevance, quality and scale of the academic focus on communication for development, media development, social and behavioural change, please respond to this email with a "yes, interested" note. We will create a specific, small group for that purpose. 

2. Should you wish to be a convenor and moderator of that group please let me know. We can assign you the necessary permissions along with some basic training (it is all very easy!).

3. The Communication Initiative has commenced the process of summarising relevant academic courses (with support from Temple University). Some examples follow. Please do send information on your courses so that we can communicate these in support of the work of others. Some present examples include:

University Andina Simón Bolívar - Master of Strategic Communication

Universidad Uniminuto - Master of Communication, Development and Social Change

Ahmadu Bello University - Masters Degree in Development Communication

University of the Philippines, Los Banos - Master of Science in Development Communication

University of Hyderabad - Masters in Communication

The University of Queensland - Master Programme on Communication for Social Change

We will share others soon. Please do send us details of your courses.

Finally a quick response re the comments from Andrew. We looked into this and (a) there were two accounts and (b) some people posted to multiple groups - hence the duplication. 

Thanks again - please do let me know by return email if you wish to be part of a group that works on the issues raised and if you wish to be a moderator/convenor of that group.

Bets wishes to all  `

hope all is good

am thnking of framework for c4d  So we can all follow when we applying for our c4d approach in field level here by what am thinking of and please add as you see , as all opinion is so important for this , as am going to advocate on camp mobilization field level  as there are community mobilization working group and we will start from their  to make sure that all I/NGO are following this framework  also to make it an global C4D  framework ,

Background

Programme analysis

Programme goal

Behavioural analysis of the participants’ group

Communication objective

Messages

Channels

Strategies/Activities

Monitoring indicators

Background: challenges , methods used before

Programme analysis: what have been done 

Programme goal: is _____________ (what is programme goal in Project Cooperation Agreement

Behavioural analysis of the participants’ group : (what is the current and desired behaviour of target group they practice in relation 

Communication objective :). What will the communication intervention make the target audience feel, think, believe, do, or not do?

Messages: What we want them to KNOW , What we want them to FEEL , What we want them to DO

Channels : mass media ,    interpersonal communication , non-traditional media,

Strategies/Activities : activities 1 activities 2 

Monitoring Indicators (log frame) : Knowledge , Attitudes , Practices and behaviours

1. There are a lot of good ideas. Can someone summarize them in a page or less so that other comments need not repeat.

2. I do not think you need a Masters degree in C4D. It can be a course added to any one of the public health education or communication programs.

3. To select most suitable program, choose the one which is aimed at changing human behavior. I believe public health education/communication programs are.

I am interested to connect with Marco Meneses as I am in West Palm Beach. Thanks.

ED NOTE: Working group now established - please see Advancing C4D in Academic Institutions - 54 people have joined to date

Dear All,

I am a Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication in the University of Malawi with over 14 years lecturing experience.

Firstly, let me register my intention to join this initiative though late. Secondly, I would like to share the experience in my university, particularly at The Polytechnic College where I am based. Within our faculty, we have the Language and Communication Department as well as the Journalism Department who are mandated to offer C4D programmes. Despite our university being around for about 52 years, I have realised that we do not have programmes focusing on C4D except for an Masters degree programme in Behavioural Change Communication. Now we are faced with the challenge of implementing a top-down approach to come up with similar C4D programmes at the undergraduate level. 

Outside our university, the situation is worse. Most public and private universities have focused more on Linguistics and Journalism rather than C4D. If this initiative could be sustained, I will encourage my peers in the other universities to join so that we could learn from the expriences elsewhere.

Best regards,

Andrew

Andrew Chimpololo

Senior Lecturer, Language and Communication

University of Malawi (Polytechnic),

Private Bag 303,

Blantyre 3,

Malawi.

Dear colleagues,

It is wonderful to see a vibrant conversation on this topic. I want to draw your attention to another opportunity located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The University of the Witwatersrand offers a Master of Public Health with a specialisation in SBCC (highlighted at this URL).

As well as 1-week face-to-face competency-based courses certified at both Attendence (40 hours) and Competency (60 hours) levels. There is a more detailed write-up of the origins of our programme and and history at the above URL.

The key point, though, is we were developed as a partnership between Wits and Soul City, with an aim to address many of the gaps discussed here between theory and practice. The original curricula were developed with inputs from an Advisory Board that included Rafael Obregon, Bunmi Makinwa, Sue Goldstein, Shereen Usdin and Thomas Tufte among others. This has been refined through the inputs of our student/practitioners and other great contributers such as Silvio Waisbord, David Mould, and Adebayo Fayoyin. Since our first MPH cohort in 2010, we have graduated 33 MPH students specialising in SBCC.

We've had experiences working with other universities in Armenia, Nigeria, Tanzania and most recently Malawi in sharing our experiences of setting up academic programmes and/or short courses in SBCC. The Malawi exchanges are ongoing and are also involving the Government of Malawi's Ministry of Health in ensuring that courses are designed to address the government's communication training needs.

We have also partnered with  UNICEF and Ohio University in offering the face-to-face component of a blended learning C4D course. We are happy to share any or all of these experiences with this group as part of the conversation.

As others have noted, there is a lot to learn from the experiences of others on this forum. 

Best wishes,

Sara

At the University of East Anglia, Uk we run a specifc BA in Media for International Development  which covers C4D extensively.

It is also an very popular elective in our pure international development course.

We also offer a Masters level course and short courses for international development professionals on request.

I agree C4D training is essential and would like to be involved in future discussions

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks Sara and Lebogang for your input. It would be great to learn from your institution on how you managed the curriculum development processes. Some colleagues in our department at the University of Malawi (Polytechnic) have attended short-term courses on SBCC at the University of Pretoria as part of our working partnership with FHI 360. For sure, we will benefit from their knowledge and skills attained from the short courses as we are very keen on developing new SBCC programmes.

Also, I will visit your university webpage to obtain full details about your Master programme since we have a large pool of recent graduates with interest to pursue postgraduate studies in SBCC within the region.

Best regards,

Andrew

NAME OF THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE - Your choice - Please vote at this link!

Hi and many thanks for engaging in this thread which was prompted by and informed the development of a global alliance for your common field of work - really appreciated.

Planning is well advanced for that global alliance which will bring together many closely related fields of work in order to pursue some shared goals and requirements. Please see attached (when you click on "Please click to review, comment and access any attachments" above) for the agreed outline of the Alliance.   

The fields of work include communication for development, media for development, social change, behaviour change, community engagement and participation, social marketing, facilitating dialogue and debate, freedom of expression and information, programme communication, development communication and social media and development - the people focused perspectives and approaches.

The common interests include advancing shared policy interests, identifying and agreeing the most compelling evidence for the impact of these strategies and expanding the resource base for the work.

But we need your help on one further matter, please - the NAME!

We need to agree a name for the Alliance. That name needs to resonate across all of these fields of work. It should convey quickly and easily what we are all about. The name should be outcome focused. For further background to inform your choice please do access the Alliance outline attached.

At this link there is a survey with the two name possibilities identified as the primary options by the planning group advancing the development of this Alliance. Can we please ask you to click on this link and VOTE FOR YOUR CHOICE.

Communication is effective when my intention is understood or assimilated by you and you in turn make me to know that you understood or assimilated my intention.

….let’s make sense now with what works!

Did I communicate effectively?

It is a platform where practitioners as well as academia will meet and share ideas about the practice and future direction of SBCC and EE.

What Works? Shifting Norms; Changing Behaviours; Amplifying Voice - #SBCCSummit