Truthfully, development communication was not something I had thought much of when entering the Fellowship. When I was placed with the Department of School Education (DSE) in Haryana, I was imagining a year where I would be much more involved in policy work, as well as program design and implementation. What I’ve realized as the Fellowship progressed, however, is just how central communication is to the successful design and implementation of government initiatives.
In hindsight this feels quite obvious. In order for any policy or program to be successful, its ideas, schemes, participant roles, and outcomes must be clearly defined and articulated. It’s not enough to just have a good idea, the stakeholders you’re working with need to be aware of how good that idea is too. Accomplishing this is a multifaceted approach that involves various communication strategies running in-tandem to raise awareness and create discussion with stakeholders.
I emphasize the use of various strategies, and creating discussion, as these often go hand in hand. When your initiative isn’t reaching your target audience effectively, it requires taking a step back and reevaluating your communication strategy, particularly through stakeholder feedback. A personal example of this is through the skills passbook program that I had worked on. The skills passbook was developed after the first academic census of the school year. It converted the information from the academic census into a highly granular excel sheet, breaking down the skill level of students across the state in the primary NIPUN competencies they are to be assessed on. The idea is for the passbook to be utilized by teachers to update as the year went on, as the excel sheet featured drop down tabs where they could change the competency level of the students in their classroom.
The goal of this is for teachers to better understand FLN competencies, and also better track student progress. The competencies in the passbook are laid out to indicate a level of progression, going from lower level/base competencies to higher level/complex ones. The progress of the student in the higher level competencies is contingent on their progress in the previous base level ones. The passbook was also shared with the DSE so they can monitor student progress monthly. The passbook was initially launched solely in the district of Rohtak.
The idea of the passbook was fascinating, but in practice it proved to be less effective. Feedback from teachers was received, and we found out that they had trouble figuring out how to use excel, and found the passbook to be messy and complex. This is where I entered, now having been tasked in using the feedback to improve the passbook. It was clear to me that the communication approach of the passbook had to change, as that was what the feedback was primarily focused on, and a key element of that was the design and visuals.
Visuals are a key element of communication, and central to many of the different strategies the government or any institution uses in outreach. The design element of communication is often overlooked due to seeming less “technical” and thus less important to the overall implementation of policy and programs. In reality this is incredibly far from the case. Whether that be in the design of reports, videos, social media posts, and even excel sheets, proper design can instill the ideas of the initiative, appeal to local sensibilities, and make complex ideas easier to understand. A good design can make parts of an initiative more accessible to its target audience, and that is exactly what I had planned to do with the passbook.
My new passbook design cleaned up the excel sheet. The new design was much easier to understand as it more clearly defined different sections through color, highlighted key information through the use of bold text, and made the subject competencies easier to find. This took into account the feedback given from teachers, and created a passbook that was more beginner friendly and accessible.
I also had to address the capacity element which was another critique given by teachers. Many of them were not familiar with excel, so purely cleaning up the passbook design wasn’t enough and another strategy had to be used. I developed a training module that explained the passbook, as well as breaking down how to use excel. The module taught teachers about data entry and analysis, and also assisted in their continuous professional development, itself a central theme to the National Education Policy. The use of a video as a means of communication as opposed to a lesson or workshop was also important, as the teachers could return to the video whenever they needed to and follow it along.
With the updated passbook and accompanied training module, the feedback of the teachers was taken into account and released again. This updated strategy proved to be much more successful in communicating the key ideas of the passbook, and was much more accessible due to the new design and training module. Teachers were able to fill out the passbook and provide updated data on student progress, and also reported how it further helped them understand the competencies and how to help their students. This had reached beyond teachers as well, with district and block officers also utilizing the videos and passbook in their work.
Currently, the passbook will be incorporated into the larger teacher guides throughout the whole state for the upcoming academic year, and to have been central in making that happen is a surreal feeling. The fact is the program wouldn’t have reached this point without a communication strategy rooted in access and creating awareness. Working with stakeholders and understanding their feedback was central to making this happen, as the design and visuals of the passbook were updated, and the training module was developed in response to their feedback and accessibility needs. Communication and design isn’t just making something look nice, but it has real effects on program implementation and ensuring change.
