Transactional Radio Instruction : Improving Educational Outcomes for Children in Conflict Zones

This book offers an important addition to the growing literature on education in emergencies. In war situations or in the wake of natural disasters, children’s education is often significantly disrupted. This book demonstrates how the authors used radio and mobile technologies to improve educational outcomes for over 20,000 displaced and out-of-school children in northeast Nigeria at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency. Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) programs typically interact with a functional classroom teacher. However, the transactional radio instruction strategy presented provides high-quality, safe, and sensitive education in war-torn societies, where there are no schools or teachers. Summarizing the research and lessons learned from a USAID-funded Technology Enhanced Learning for All (TELA) project in Boko Haram-ravaged northeast Nigeria, the book describes in detail an education-in-emergency strategy based on a “whole of community” approach, with radio and mobile tablets at its core.   

Dr. Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob is a visiting international scholar in International Studies at Dickinson College, United States. He previously worked as Program Chair and Dean at the American University of Nigeria. Jacob has consulted, taught, and published extensively on the intersections between communication interventions, violent extremism, war and peace.

Dr. Margee Ensign is the 29th President of Dickinson College. Prior to moving to Dickinson, she was the President of the American University of Nigeria and led the Adamawa Peace Initiative. She is a widely published scholar whose work focuses primarily on the challenges of international development and the implications of development assistance.