What is the impact of 'media coach education' training on participants and their schools?

Media coach training in education

Reason

Education has a tradition of slow change in contrast to the lightning-fast digitalisation and associated challenges. We therefore see that media literacy in schools is often still too little integrated and ingrained:

• Schools often do not know what to do when, for example, sexting and cyberbullying rear their heads;
• There is little teaching devoted to these topics in lessons;
• We also see that only a limited number of teachers also purposefully use digital media as a teaching tool to shape their lessons.

Because of these reasons, a separate media coach training programme for schools came into being.

Goal

The aim of the media coach training is to enhance the media literacy of schools, teachers and students. Mediawise has been offering the training for several years for different stakeholders, ranging from education staff to CPAS staff and librarians. Since September 2021, a separate training for education has been launched with the aim of being more responsive to the specific needs of education.

Impact measurement training media coach education

In this project, we measure the impact of media coach education training. The questions in this impact study are:

• To what extent can such training help media literacy trickle down to schools and their students?
• To what extent is media literacy work being done effectively and/or is a media literacy policy being implemented in schools?
• Do teachers and, consequently, students become media savvy as a result?
• In the long run, does this training close the digital divide and can we (at least) ensure basic media literacy for every pupil?

Short- and medium-term impact

During and right after attending media coach training, we will measure impact on several fronts. We focus on:

• media coach training participants. In doing so, we use a questionnaire and focus groups to find out to what extent they are effective media coaches. At the end of the training year, we also take a knowledge test to test their media literacy knowledge.
• The quality of the media coach training itself. Here, based on an observation guide, we observe the sessions. We also evaluate the online learning environment using a substantiated checklist for effective online learning environments.

Long-term impact

For this impact measurement, we call on participants from education sectors from previous editions. Again, through a questionnaire and focus group, we follow a similar procedure to increase comparison.

After the impact measurement, our project results in a presentation and report with an overview of:

• success factors, points of improvement and bottlenecks of the media coach education process;
• concrete recommendations and tips for improvement addressed to the client.