The School-on-the-Air (SOA) Extension Modality of the Agricultural Training Institute in Region I

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of the School on-the-Air (SOA) as an extension modality of the Agricultural Training Institute in Region I. The study was limited to the AEWs and farmers’ beneficiaries in Region 1 who graduated through the SOA of the Agricultural Training Institute-Regional Training Center I (ATI-RTC I).

There were two sets of questionnaire distributed as a research instrument for this study, for SOA Graduates and SOA Coordinators and both were translated into Filipino having 5 parts.

The characteristics of SOA by resources such as manpower; farmcaster (announcer) and resource persons was rated excellent, money; fund allocation as excellent, materials; topics discussed excellent; and, machines; radio station was rated very good, overall rating is excellent. On the extent of Knowledge, Skills and Attitude acquired, there was a significant difference in the overall extent of acquisition of learning across commodities was observed.  The SOA in the region in all commodities have positive effect to the farmers’ knowledge, skills and attitude.  It means further that when the SOA satisfied the farmers in terms of manpower, money, materials and machines used, the learners will likely to change its knowledge, skills and attitude According to the respondents, SOA gave them the opportunity to learn new technology, gets additional farming and assisted farmers in implementing their farm decisions. The numbers of years of farming of the SOA graduates was found to be significant and positively correlated with the level of adoption of technology. Conferring to the SOA Graduates’ answers, commodity vary in terms of the stage they’ve been using the technology. While others are in the adoption stage, some are also found still on the trial stage.