DW Akademie trainer Daniel Hirschler sends this report from a workshop in Laos.

Action learning scenario

As a trainer, I like working with what I call “action learning settings”. This basically means designing the workshop in a way that learning happens in a good mix of experiencing something and then talking about it and reflecting upon the experience.

Workshop designs are like recipes for cooking: It’s not just the amount of the ingredients that counts, it’s also their quality. And as with any recipe, things can work out perfectly, but they can also go terribly wrong. So for a trainer, going into an action learning workshop can be fraught with tension. Will things work out? What if they don’t…?

Active acquisition of knowledge to solve concrete challenges creates confidence. And that’s something you need when you have to teach journalism to a classroom full of young Laotian twentysomethings, as do the instructors at the National University of Laos (NUOL).

These instructors are currently students themselves: they’re taking part in journalism teachers’ training and coaching, which is organized in partnership with DW-AKADEMIE’s Asia team.

At a workshop in December we reviewed some of the progress made so far. “I have more confidence in teaching these subjects now,” said one of the younger colleagues. Others agreed.

One senior lecturer brought along a revamped version of a project the training participants had created the previous September – a newspaper made from scratch. It was a showcase item at NUOL’s 15th anniversary celebration in November.

The instructors-in-training had put tremendous effort into producing it, and that has really paid off in their daily work. Here’s why:

Is there a proper definition of journalism in the Lao language? Since DW-AKADEMIE’s first workshop on journalism at the National University of Laos in Vientiane, there is. It was conceived by 15 staff teachers of the Department of Mass Communication at the Faculty of Letters – after long discussions revolving around somewhat abstract terms like “media”, “the public”, “society” and “information”. 

Lao is not a language that lends itself to describing abstract ideas. Yet the 15 teachers feel it was worth the effort to lay a foundation they now can build upon. They are learning the mindset, tools and skills that in combination make a journalist. The reasoning behind this is that they are the ones training a new generation of Lao students who are eager to take on the profession.