One of the most interesting professional perspectives I have gained from my time at the Centre for Environment (CEE) has been viewing education from the perspective of communications. The same questions and considerations for making compelling communications materials are also critical for creating a module for students that not only touches on the most essential topics and learnings for the subject, but also does so in a way that transmits those concepts effectively. This blog will go “behind-the-scenes” of my work in creating a module on Climate Change & Sustainability for CEE, focusing on the core aspects of designing and writing an engaging educational deliverable from the lens of communications.
Audience: Who you are making a written piece for is always an important consideration. It frames the language you use to convey information, as well as what specifically you choose to include in your work. For educational materials, however, the question of audience becomes even more critical and complex. You have to consider what grades the students you are writing for are in, what they have learned in previous classes, and what they would be expected to know before looking at the module you are creating. Certain topics might need to be rephrased, approached in a different way, or omitted entirely, solely depending on the level of the target student audience. In preparing to write the Climate Change & Sustainability module, I had to research ICSE syllabi from previous grades and have several conversations with my coworkers to lay out what students had already learned before they would start our module. We spent several team meetings outlining how we might still include important topics that are often bogged down by technical jargon—for example, writing “diversity of life” instead of “biodiversity”—and making tough decisions about what subjects we could not include, with our target readers and limited time in mind.
Guidelines: Even for pieces with the most creative liberty, there are almost always some form of guidelines you have to follow. Communications materials often have specific themes they need to convey, along with having to follow the rules, regulations, and norms of the organization that publishes them. The same is true for education. When you are making materials for use in schools, however, you need to follow more than just your organization’s rules—you must ensure that you are also complying with national educational guidelines. In particular, I had to delve into the most updated frameworks that set the educational standards not only for our module, but for educational materials across the entire country—the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP) from the Ministry of Education, and the 2023 National Curriculum Framework for Student Education (NCFSE) from the National Council of Educational Research & Training. These texts guided the construction of the new module and influenced both the concepts we chose to transact and the ways we decided to convey them.
Conciseness: In works that I have from authors long past and conversations I’ve had with current peers about writing, I often hear some form of the classic writer’s lament: that if only there were more time, they could have written a shorter piece. Conveying key messages with as few words as possible is a core component of effective communications design—not only is your audience’s attention span limited, but excessive wording can often obscure what was originally a clear and impactful message. Education work faces a similar challenge. Creating effective modules for a younger audience, which, in our case, are 6th to 8th graders, means not only using the most concise wording possible, but also limiting how in-depth the text goes for the topics. For our module, we have 30 hours of content to fit the entirety of what students should learn on Climate Change & Sustainability. While this amount may seem extensive, much of that duration involves time-intensive activities, discussions, and experiential learning, leaving much less time to transact concepts than meets the eye. Each word is critical; each activity is a significant investment. Just like in communications, creating an effective module requires intensive thought to create the most clear and concise product possible.
Engagement: All human beings have a limited attention span, and that includes your audience. Just as important as making material easy to understand is making it interesting to engage with. Communication revolves around effectively keeping your audience’s attention span with your work as much as possible, and this task is especially critical from an educational standpoint. You can explain a concept eloquently, but failing to keep your audience engaged will make it incredibly difficult for students to remember and internalize any learning. Our Knowledge & Skills module is a self-paced, interactive module by design, and as such, these questions of engagement are key to its success. We plan to include a number of activities, experiential learning, and discussion questions, among other ways to keep students interested in the topics. To this end, we have drawn from CEE’s past work, learned from past successes, and initiated conversations with NGOs like the Climate Reality Project, the Centre for Science and Environment, and UNESCO New Delhi to learn the best practices and pedagogies for making a module that holds the attention of students. In this way, the question of engagement is central to the structure and creation of our module.
These four communications lenses demonstrate the depth to which communications skills and practices are important to creating effective educational modules. My work with CEE has given me the experiences and insights to hone these skills, for which I am deeply grateful. My learnings from here have not only made me more proud of the work I have been able to produce with them, but have also given me confidence in my ability to apply these critical skills to my future work.
