ABSTRACT

Purpose: Audience response system technology has been found to have modest learning and larger non-cognitive impacts on students in traditional secondary and post-secondary learning environments. The impacts of this technology are less understood for learners in informal settings, including for farmers in training provided by extension services.

Approach: In this study, we investigated the implementation of audience response systems by Cooperative Extension trainers in five counties in North Carolina during pesticide training for farmers. We quantitatively assessed farmers’ knowledge gains and explored their impressions of the learning environment when audience response systems were used.

Findings: Results suggest that audience response technology has similar benefits in farmer pesticide training as those identified during use in traditional educational settings. Education, age, and experience did not affect knowledge gains observed with use of the technology with farmers.

Practical Implications: This study supports the use of audience response system technology in farmer training provided by extension services, even for older adults without post-secondary education.

Theoretical Implications: As in traditional learning environments, non-cognitive impacts of audience response system use in farmer training appear to be more robust than learning impacts, and the implementation practices of trainers may influence learning outcomes.

Originality/Value: This study meets a need to understand the impact of audience response systems on learning outcomes in agricultural and extension learning environments and uses pre-test measures to establish baseline comparisons of control and treatment groups.

摘要

目的：发现受众响应系统技术在传统的中学和中学后学习环境中对学生具有中等程度的学习和较大的非认知影响。对于非正式环境中的学习者，包括对扩展服务提供的培训中的农民，这种技术的影响鲜为人知。

方法：在这项研究中，我们调查了北卡罗来纳州五个县的合作社扩展培训员在对农民进行农药培训期间的观众响应系统的实施情况。当使用观众响应系统时，我们定量评估了农民的知识增益，并探讨了他们对学习环境的印象。

研究结果：结果表明，受众响应技术在农民农药培训中的收益与在传统教育环境中使用农药时获得的收益相似。受教育程度，年龄和经验不会影响与农民一起使用该技术所观察到的知识获取。

实际意义：该研究支持在扩展服务提供的农民培训中使用受众响应系统技术，即使对于没有专上教育的老年人也是如此。

理论意义：与传统的学习环境一样，在农民培训中使用受众响应系统的非认知影响似乎比学习影响更强大，并且培训师的实施实践可能会影响学习成果。

独创性/价值：该研究满足了理解观众响应系统对农业和扩展学习环境中学习成果的影响的需要，并使用了测试前的方法来建立对照组和治疗组的基线比较。