Designing and validating an e-learning module for agricultural researchers

Market driven agriculture demands agricultural scientific community to have an understanding of all the facets of World Trade Organization (WTO) and their implications, for conducting need based and well-timed researches. Diverse teaching methods and tools are to be looked upon for effective delivery of the content on WTO issues; thus an attempt was made to study the compatibility and suitability of e-learning material in imparting knowledge of WTO. Therefore, an e-learning module on WTO with special reference to agriculture for agricultural researchers was designed, tested and validated. The investigation revealed that issues of WTO, which seem like a macro-economic phenomena, can also made interesting by explaining concepts and ideas with relevant examples, visuals and well-structured story telling format. Usability evaluation score denotes a strong agreement among the respondents about effectiveness of the e-module with respect to aspects like content, supports, visual design, navigation, accessibility, interactivity, self-assessment, learnability and motivation to learn. The validation, using comparison of knowledge scores obtained before and after the exposure to the e-module, revealed that the e-module met its pre-defined objectives as well as learner's expectations.