Unit 2: Extension Methods & Agricultural Journalism
How the message is actually delivered. Individual, group and mass methods, audio-visual aids, and writing for a farming audience.
What this unit covers
Unit 2 is where extension stops being theory. Having established in Unit 1 that people adopt in stages and through particular channels, this unit deals with what you actually do about it: which method reaches which stage, why a result demonstration convinces where a leaflet does not, and how to write for a reader who has ten minutes and no patience for jargon. Questions here often ask you to match a method to a situation rather than to define it, so learn the methods by their trade-offs.
The unit is broken into 10 syllabus areas, listed below. ASRB has set 18 descriptive questions from it that are on record, and there are 84 practice questions for it on this site.
Syllabus areas in this unit
- Classification of extension teaching methods: individual, group and mass contact
- Farm and home visits, result demonstrations, method demonstrations, field days
- Group discussion, meetings, campaigns, exhibitions and study tours
- Mass media: radio, television, print, farm publications
- Selection and combination of teaching methods; the audio-visual aids cone
- Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience
- Agricultural journalism: writing for farm magazines, news, features and folders
- Editing, layout and readability for a rural audience
- Community radio and rural broadcasting
- Evaluating the effectiveness of extension teaching methods
Key concepts
Result demonstration. Showing the outcome of a recommended practice on a farmer's own field, so the proof is local and visible. Slow and costly, but the most convincing method for a sceptical audience.
Method demonstration. Teaching a skill by performing it step by step in front of the audience, who then practise it. Aimed at how to do something, not whether it works.
Cone of Experience. Edgar Dale's ordering of learning experiences from direct purposeful experience at the base to verbal symbols at the apex, used to choose between aids.
Previous year questions from Unit 2
Descriptive questions ASRB has actually set from this unit, with the year in brackets.
- Role of demonstration in training (2014)
- Differentiate between OFT and FLD (2016)
- Explain the readability of popular articles (2016)
- Explain the features of reporters (2016)
- Experiential Learning cycle (2014)
- Differentiate between on farm trial and Front line demonstration and their role in communication feedback (2014)
- What do you mean by Group discussion? Write the features of workshop method (2021)
- List out the publications and write their uses (2021)
18 previous year questions from this unit in total. The full list is on the PYQ page.
Practice for this unit
- 84 descriptive practice questions across 5, 10 and 15 marks, in the Mains section.
- Objective practice for this unit in the MCQ section, with ASRB marking and full analysis.
- Full-length tests that draw on this unit alongside the other nine, in the mock tests.
The other units
- Unit 1: Fundamentals of Extension Education & Communication
- Unit 2: Extension Methods & Agricultural Journalism (this page)
- Unit 3: Information Communication Technologies
- Unit 4: Training & Human Resource Development
- Unit 5: Research Methodology in Extension Education
- Unit 6: Programme Planning, Evaluation & Impact Assessment
- Unit 7: Extension Management & Organizational Behaviour
- Unit 8: Entrepreneurial Development
- Unit 9: Agricultural Innovation System & Extension Approaches
- Unit 10: Gender Sensitization & Empowerment