The content development process followed three stages that involved designing the initial teaching plan, refining it with the staff at ADG and piloting the content with an independent community in Cambodia. This process has been published as a journal article (Drain, Shekar, & Grigg, 2017).
The final teaching plan is presented in Appendix B. The refinement process is shown in Figure 21.
Figure 21 - Overview of CCB content development
The design of the CCB content followed the process outlined by Eade (1997). This ensured that the community and socio-cultural environment were effectively considered. As much of the required information was included in Chapter 2, only new information is presented in the following chapter. The steps used are shown in Section 2.4.2, Table 7.
4.1.1 Aims
CCB workshops aimed to enhance the participants’ capacity to participate in PD activities. This was guided by the collaborative competencies as well as insights from the partner organisation ADG. 4.1.2 Learners
The learners in the Project 1 (stage 2 and 3) were from a single community in Kampong Tralach District, Kampong Chhnang Province, Cambodia. The participants were a mixture of PwD and able community member (carers and community representatives). A full description of Cambodia is provided in Section 2.7. A full description of the participant group is provided in Section 6.2. The participants in the pilot study of CCB were from a single community in Takeo Province, Cambodia.
Gender
The participants were both male and female and as such efforts to ensure gender equality through pedagogy and informal interacts was prioritized. One of these efforts was the use of male and female designers in the project to ensure both genders are represented in the facilitation and participant groups. The participants in the pilot study were all male.
History
Provided in Section 2.7.1. Religion
Provided in Section 2.7.2. Occupation
As the PD project aimed to involve PwD in the design of assistive agricultural technology, the occupation of the involved participants was farming (specifically, rice and chickens). Most participants maintained a subsistence lifestyle, meaning the majority of their crops were consumed by their families with some trade at a local market. Some participants also occupied other small jobs in the community such as maintenance of shared assets (such as water supply) and roles in the village council.
Education
Provided in Section 2.7.3. Field Research
The present researcher undertook two field trips to rural communities in Cambodia, with EWB, before the CCB content was developed. The researcher travelled to several Mekong Islands in the Kratie Province and worked with several western engineers, and a local NGO. This work involved working with the community to scope new engineering projects that could be supported by the local NGO. 4.1.3 Access
Access to the community was in the form of multi-day workshops conducted in a central meeting place, usually the religious pagoda. Workshops were scheduled to be no longer than three days and at least two weeks apart. This was to ensure participants were still able to tend to their farms and look after their families. Given the subsistence nature of rural Cambodian communities, it was not ethical to demand more time from them. Furthermore, the schedule needed to remain flexible and considerate to the demanding work schedules of the community.
4.1.4 Trainers
The trainers chosen to facilitate the CCB were two female Cambodian designers (D1 and D2) working for ADG, based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. They were supported by several other designers, both male and female. See Section 5.3 for more detail about the designers.
To understand the two female designers’ background, pre-understanding and experience, semi- structured interviews were undertaken with each of them. Both designers spoke the local dialect
(Khmer), and English, and had previous experience working with communities on both capacity building programmes and design projects. Both were from the same rural province in Cambodia and had university-level degrees from Phnom Penh universities. The projects they had previously worked on included a 6-month financial literacy programme for farmers in Angkor Chey, Kampot Province, the facilitation of a project to design playground equipment, an agricultural “net house” project and assistive technologies to improve access to sanitation services for PwD. Given the relatively young tertiary education sector in Cambodia and lack of tertiary graduates (WBG, 2008), the designers were deemed to have high levels of experience in this area and, as such, were considered experts in community development. The present researcher also gave support during the planning stages and a train-the-trainer approach was used for areas requiring development. The researcher was present for all formal contact with the community. However, relied on the Khmer trainers for most facilitation due to language and cultural barriers.
4.1.5 Needs Analysis
The needs that were addressed were identified through analysis of previously conducted PD projects. In summary, the following competencies were identified as being important:
1. Ability to express opinion about a project 2. Ability to generate insightful ideas 3. Ability to create insightful prototypes 4. Understanding of the design process/activity 5. Motivation to contribute
These were viewed as the learning outcomes that should be developed through the CCB workshops, and throughout the PD project.
4.1.6 Lessons from Previous CCB
It is important to learn from previous project work, as such, the next section reviews the practical challenges faced by Taha (2011) in Uganda.
To begin, Taha utilized the CCB methodology, developed at MIT’s D-Lab, to introduce the design process to a community of refugees in Uganda. This project utilized four days of workshops slowly introducing each stage of the design process with accompanying activities. It was deemed successful; however, a number of difficulties were faced. Key learnings from the project are summarized below:
1. A charcoal brisket press was used as an example to illustrate the design process. While the example was effective at highlighting the relevance of design to the rural community the technology may have been too distracting to community members, as they had not seen a
charcoal press before. Therefore, the attention of the participants was on the new technology and not the design process. To avoid this issue, an example which was both relevant and novel, while not being so innovative that the community would be distracted by the effectiveness of the technology, had to be considered.
2. During a prototyping activity, participants were asked to design a prototype out of paper that could lift maize 10cm off the ground. To improve instruction clarity, the designers showed an example of a possible solution. Unintentionally, this resulted in all participants copying the exact example.
3. This project found that relocation, due to rain, resulted in a long delay. This suggests that having a clear contingency plan in the event of rain or extreme weather would be helpful. 4. It is important to practice all demonstrations before each workshop to ensure they will work
effectively. One demonstration in this project did not work when required resulting in a lack of engagement and potentially a negative effect on the perceived importance of the design process.
5. 60% of participants were not literate; this meant that evaluation of the programme was difficult as verbal feedback yielded mostly polite answers through translation. To address this, two feedback tools were implemented. The first used a multi-choice format in which participants would select a certain nut (which corresponded to predetermined answers ranging from terrible to excellent) and place it in a bowl. The second used open-ended questions and placed the participants into small groups with one scribe in each group, to record the answers. Questions focused on the effectiveness and fun of each activity.
6. The programme worked with 55-65 participants; however, the research stated that it would have been more effective with 20-25 participants.
The present researcher utilized the content and reflection from Taha (2011) as a starting point for CCB version 1. This is presented in the next section.