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Conclusion………………………………………………………………….……. 32
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………. 36
Introduction
Teaching materials will only be worth writing if they fulfill a need. It is important to decide exactly what the need is, so that the material can be prepared for this specific purpose. You may find that you have to explain how to use a particular piece of equipment very frequently. It might be easier to write down the instructions for its use, so that the students can learn how to use the equipment by themselves. You may find that students find part of the course very difficult. So you could give them some exercises to practice what they have learned during that part.
You might prepare a list of the tasks that you expect students to be able to do. This would guide them and help them to make sure that they had learned all the necessary skills. You might find that drugs are not being stored properly or they are being prescribed in the wrong doses. Written materials could help to prevent this. If you find that there is a need for a manual or some other type of written material.
There are different ways in which teaching material may be used. The style of writing, layout, and amount of explanation will all depend on the way in which you expect the health worker to use the material.
1. Used as training materials. Materials can be used to present new information or to describe skills that need to be learned by the students. In this case, the material should have detailed explanations, step-by-step instructions, a lot of examples and possibly some exercises.
Materials like this might be used during the initial training course or to explain new methods of doing a particular task. They might also be used for restraining health workers.
2. Used as reference materials. Materials can also be used to remind health workers about facts or skills that they learned during the training course.
These materials are called reference materials and are often written in the form of a manual.
A reference manual might contain dosages of drugs which the health worker constantly needs to refer to. On the other hand, the manual might contain details of procedures that are only carried out rarely. For example, medical assistants do not have to give advice about the siting of a well very often, so they will probably need to refer to a manual to find out the recommended distances of latrines from a well.
Reference materials must be well indexed so that health workers can find the necessary information quickly. Less explanation is needed because the purpose is to remind them about what they have already learned. Each part of the material must be complete in itself, because the workers will only be using one part at a time - they will not be reading through the book or manual.
Teachers and other people who write manuals should decide what kind of material they want to write at the very beginning. This is because the layout and style are affected by this decision.
Then you have decided on the general features of the material, you need to prepare a plan for writing and producing it.
This will not be necessary for handouts or very short material used by one teacher. But when a larger manual or several different people are involved, a plan is essential.
The stages which are often followed are listed below.
Stages in writing manuals and written teaching materials
1. Make the initial planning decisions - as outlined in Section 13.3.
2. Decide on the overall content of the manual and what will be covered in each section.
3. Write out a rough draft.
4. Discuss this with colleagues and some of the people for whom you are writing (e.g. experienced health workers and your students).
5. Rewrite the draft using the layout you want in the final version. Add diagrams, illustrations and index.
6. Evaluate the material.
7. Rewrite the material.
8. Make arrangements for the printing or duplication of the material.
9. Produce and distribute the first edition.
These stages are not rigid. It may be necessary to rewrite the material several times. Additional stages may be required, such as the preparation of training sessions in which the health workers are taught how to use the material. There may be some evaluation at an earlier stage in the process. However, the broad pattern will probably be a useful guide.
Manuals and teaching materials are written to help people to do things. For example, one manual called Obstetric emergencies is designed to enable rural health workers to treat women with obstetric emergencies and to know when to refer them to hospital. Another much smaller piece of teaching material has the title recording the administration of drugs. In both cases the general purposes of the materials are clear. The purposes were probably decided during the initial planning when the need for the manual or teaching material was identified.
When you are evaluating teaching materials, you should find out what the health workers think about the materials. You should also observe the students or qualified health workers using the material and find out for yourself whether they can use it. This is called performance testing.
For example, a section of a manual or handout describing how to give a patient an injection could be tested by watching a student perform the task. If the student gives the injection correctly, then the manual is satisfactory.
This kind of performance testing can be carried out by asking the health worker to perform specific skills in a test situation. It can also be done by observing health workers working in their normal workplace and seeing whether they follow the method described in the manual.
There are two general reasons for evaluating teaching materials. The first reason is to find out how useful the material is to the health workers. This is called summative evaluation. You might use summative evaluation on manuals written by other people to decide whether your students would find them helpful. The manual can also be evaluated by looking at the results over a longer period. Manuals explaining how to convince village people about the need for a good diet can be evaluated by looking at the number of cases of malnutrition and diseases related to poor diet. If the number of cases decreases, then the manual can be considered to be effective. However, if there is no change or the number increases, you need to investigate the reasons and possibly change the manual.
Teaching materials and manuals should be evaluated before the final version is produced. This will allow you to improve the material before it is widely used.
It may also be useful to evaluate materials after they have been used for some time. If there are important weaknesses a revised version should be produced.
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