Technological developments are impacting the media organisations in many ways.  New delivery platforms, new media products & services and enhanced audience expectations are posing challenges for the broadcast organisations.  Well-equipped and trained human resources in the broadcasting field are valuable assets for the organisations to meet these challenges.

Technological developments are impacting the media organisations in many ways.  New delivery platforms, new media products & services and enhanced audience expectations are posing challenges for the broadcast organisations.  Well-equipped and trained human resources in the broadcasting field are valuable assets for the organisations to meet these challenges.

RTM, the public service broadcaster of Malaysia had identified the need for training and capacity building to meet the new multi-skilling and multi-tasking requirements of its engineering staff.  Trained trainers were required to manage the consequential training needs through the in-house training of its staff.  Accordingly, the AIBD / RTM in-country workshop on Training of Trainers was organised from 24th November to 5th December 2014 at AIBD, Kuala Lumpur to meet this training need.

Fourteen participants from different sections of engineering division of RTM attended the workshop. These covered engineering staff from the areas of TV and Radio Operations, TV production, Multi-channel broadcast, News automation as well as TV transmission and Satellite network centre. It was observed that though the participants had good knowledge of their area of expertise, they did not have much idea about how to effectively impart their subject matter knowledge and skills to other staff.  Lack of requisite skills for training warranted specific inputs to be given to develop them as effective trainers on the job.

AIBD TOT programme for trainer / instruction development caters very well to these needs.  The standardised structure and curriculum of TOT which deals with planning, conduct, management and evaluation of trainings for core competency development for organisational staff was suitably oriented to meet the specific requirement of the RTM engineering staff .  The ten days workshop covered Aims of training, Role of a trainer, Job analysis and Training Needs Analysis, Formulation of Training objectives, Instructional design and overview of Training methods/ techniques (OJT etc.) as well as Session preparation & presentation and Evaluation of training to ascertain its effectiveness.

The salient features of the workshop were experiential learning techniques for adult learners through interactive lecture presentations, discussions and group work. The emphasis in the workshop was on the Learning-by-Doing and structured projects involving group as well as individual presentations were included in the workshop.  This generated lot of interest / involvement amongst the participants. The micro-teaching session helped the participants to practice as well as demonstrate assimilation of learning in the workshop.

The participants of the workshop were a fairly homogeneous group and took keen interest in all the activities. The end of the workshop evaluation showed that participants found the inputs received by them in the workshop, very useful and had gained very much in terms of Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes for being effective trainers.  They were very satisfied with the conduct of the workshop and felt confident and enthusiastic to take up their responsibilities in organising training in respective areas at RTM.  

The consultant for the workshop was Mr. Y.K. Sharma, Advisor (Training & HRD), Broadcast Engineering Consultants (India) Limited, India. Mr. Sharma observed that the knowledge and skills gained by the participants will go a long way in developing them as effective trainers and help RTM build a core of trained trainers to train their staff.  It will definitely help RTM’s human resources and capacity building endeavor for meeting present and future requirements.