Radio: Use in Education, Advantages & Limitations

Radio: Use in Education| Advantages & Limitations

What is Radio?

Radio is an effective audio aid device that is capable of providing valuable assistance to the teacher in the classroom by presenting useful information and learning experiences to a large number of students.

According to R. G. Raymonds,

“Radio is the most significant medium for education. As a supplement to classroom teaching its possibilities are almost unlimited. Its teaching possibilities are not confined to the five or six hours of the school day. It is available from early morning till long after midnight. By utilizing the rich educational and cultural offerings of the radio, children and adults in communities, however remote, have access to the best of the world’s stores of knowledge and art. Some day its use as an educational instrument will be as common place as textbooks and blackboards.

Radio broadcasts are of two types:

1. General broadcast providing general information about the events and happenings assimilating knowledge about the worlds, culture and life.
2. Educational broadcast specifically prepared and broadcast for serving the cause of education and classroom in the form of radio lesson, lectures, etc.

Use of Radio in Classroom Education

The educational broadcasting services offered by the AIR and other radio channels may render valuable assistance in the classroom instructional programme. For the desired outcomes, it needs a careful effort on the part of teachers.

Following things should be done by teachers to utilize radio broadcasting in the classroom:

1. The teacher must acquaint themselves with the schedule and programmes of these broadcasts through the relevant available literature.
2. They must carefully think and plan the integration of the schedule broadcasting programme with his classroom teaching.
3. The teacher must try to prepare his students as adequately and possible educationally as well as psychologically to get the knowledge and experiences properly which is imparted through a radio broadcast.
4. They should seek proper control of the environmental situations, physical conditions and learning environment for the proper utilization of radio broadcasting. They should be sure that all the students hear a clear signal. The set should be properly located. The room conditions should be favorable with a minimum of distraction and outside disturbances.
5. The radio broadcasting should have an adequate follow-up programme. There should be a lively discussion over the learning objectives achieved through the broadcasting. The learning gaps and difficulties in understanding the radio presentation should come into limelight. The actions and reactions occurred in the minds of the students should be properly responded and helped for enriching their experiences and furthering their education.

Advantages / Educational Advantages

The educational advantages of radio broadcasting are as follows:

• Radio broadcasting makes it possible to listen to the lectures, talks, discussions and seminar proceedings of educational interest in which renowned authors, educationalist, leading scholars and other important personalities may participate. Such contact provides immense educational and psychological value to the students.
• Through its planned and sequenced classroom lessons on various topics related to school subjects, radio broadcasting may provide much assistance to the classroom teacher in realizing the instructional objectives.
• Radio broadcasting is a potent source of education as these are capable of integrating education with the real life experience on one hand and healthy entertainment and source of pleasure on the other. The students can be easily motivated to listen to the radio talks and thus derive the desired educational benefits.
• As a mass media, radio broadcasting is a highly economical source of educational instructions. Its advantage may reach uniformly to millions of its listeners by breaking distance and time barriers and the costing is almost negligible.
• Radio broadcasting has capacity of solving various problems in the field of education arising out of the shortage of man-material resources. There is a shortage of good textbooks, well-planned instructional programmes, suitable instructional devices and aids and competent teachers. The learner population is increasing day by day. The courses of instructions are widening. It is not possible to provide the benefits of education to such a large number of learners with the desired efficiency without the aid of an effective medium like radio broadcasting.

Limitations of Radio in Education

Some of the drawbacks of the radio broadcasting are as follows:

• The educational value of radio broadcasting depends upon the use of the sense of hearing. Students may become uninterested and non-attentive after listening continuously to the broadcasting.
• It reduces the task of teaching and learning as a one way communication. Therefore, students have very little opportunity to participate in the instructional activity which occurs in a passive way.
• It is difficult to schedule programmes which will be acceptable to the majority of the students. Therefore, teachers and students find it hard to integrate these programmes with their own instructional activities in the school.
• The students and teacher both face difficulties in having adequate preparation for the utilization of off-the-air broadcasts on account of the scarcity of adequate pre-information, and manual or guides.

However, these limitations can be overcome with a little more efforts on the part of the teachers and the concerned authorities. It we utilize the full potential of the radio, it may found to be very beneficial as an instructional tool for the teaching of any subject.

Important links

• Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Measurement
• Overhead Projector (OHP): Mechanism & Use in Education
• Evaluation: Types and their Characteristics- with pdf
• Concept and Need of Continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE)
• Statistics- Meaning | Definition | Characteristics and Aims
• Statistics: Nature | Importance & Limitation with pdf
• Graphical representation of Data: Meaning & Importance
• Measurement of Central Tendency: Mean Median Mode

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