In a country with no press freedom, where journalists and bloggers are imprisoned and with a growing censorship on social studies, the Iranian citizen who wishes to express him or herself freely is limited. Limited in their reporting activities, as well as in gaining skills to professionalize themselves. It is therefore Radio Zamaneh’s ambition to help citizen reporters in developing their skills and professionalize their messages, so more voices will be heard!
Journalism lessons for all
At the beginning of 2011, Radio Zamaneh announced its 1000th student to enroll in an unique e-learning program aimed at the Persian speaking community. Merely six months after the pilot kick-off in August of 2010, the number of students had grown beyond imagination. While the team had aimed at reaching approximately 100 students in total, the courses offered by Radio Zamaneh became immense popular and were shared widely amongst the Iranian community, which led to a current amount of students leaning towards 2000 without undertaking any promotional activities.
Now, several months later and after hard work by ICT professionals, journalists and teachers, an even better online education system was designed to serve even more students in a more optimized way. Topics inspired by the journalistic work of the Zamaneh editorial team and the needs expressed by students, developed into several new courses. Students will benefit from enhancing their reporting skills through lessons on source handling, writing skills, interviewing techniques, journalism ethics, video and audio blogging, use of smart-phones for reporting, photo journalism, online security and many more..
The program is set up in an extremely save and user-friendly way for this specific target group which has a main focus on citizens in Iran with limited ICT possibilities. It is based on an automatic system of sending and receiving through e-mails and tailor made to the Persian language. The students receive all lessons in their inbox, which enables easy access to course material. The multiple-choice quizzes are automated while feedback on the students’ performance and the correct answers are still being provided. Even a personalized certificate is sent to the successful graduates.
From basic lessons to interactive teaching and publications
This basic e-mail based project is complemented by an online learning platform for advanced courses with personal training, teaching and support. This digital classroom provides a selection of successful graduates from the basic courses the chance to practice the skills they have learned in three intensive two-month trainings on advanced journalistic writing, radio production and video production. The interactive platform allows students to have direct contact with the teacher, download useful sources, share knowledge and learn from each others assignments.
As a result of the training many of the students and graduates have had their work published on the Radio Zamaneh media platform!
Some examples of articles published by students can be found on the following links (in Persian):
http://radiozamaneh.com/society/women/2011/09/14/6934
http://radiozamaneh.com/politics/2011/09/13/6917
http://radiozamaneh.com/culture/silver-screen/2011/09/01/6535
Download more information on our E-learning project here:
