Capturing and reusing audio knowledge exchanges for agricultural extension - a review with reference to the Knowledge Help Extension Technology (KHETI) project in Sironj, Madhya Pradesh, India.
Paul Matthews, Syed Haider Mehdi Rizvi · 2008
We report on an innovative project which is using participatory and agile software development methods to support a farmer’s production company in India. A key requirement of the software, as identified by the farmers themselves, is to capture diagnostic and consultative interviews with experts and extension officers for future reuse and to record farmer information requests for asynchronous responses. The solution is server-based, but using mobile phones to transmit conversations to the server repository. Conversation analysis and the exchange of knowledge using audio is a problem that encompasses the fields of artificial intelligence, knowledge capture, anthropology and ICT for development. The established and trusted medium of radio for agricultural knowledge capture is today complimented by podcasting technology which leverages web-based audio files for expert knowledge exchange. We will review these various fields and technologies to distil the relevant learning with reference to the objective of augmenting agricultural extension and the exchange of farmers’ knowledge. A key aim of knowledge-based repositories is the reuse and repurposing of knowledge objects by users. We also investigate the factors that have been shown to contribute to reuse, and relate this to the development of the KHETI system. The content and structure of our pilot audio segments will be described and the implications for system design and usage protocols will be outlined.