An Assessment Model for Agricultural Databases: The Arthropod Pesticide Resistance Database as a Case Study.

This paper presents a multi-method approach for evaluating the utility and impact of agricultural databases in the context of the rapidly expanding digital economy. Focusing on the Arthropod Pesticide Resistance Database, one of the most comprehensive global resources on arthropod pesticide resistance, we offer a framework for assessing the effectiveness of agricultural databases. Our approach provides practical guidance for developers, users, evaluators, and funders on how to measure the impact of these digital tools, using relevant metrics and data to validate their contributions.

Agricultural education in Africa using YouTube multilingual animations: A retrospective feasibility study assessing costs to reach language-diverse populations.

There is a critical need for widespread information dissemination of agricultural best practices in Africa. Literacy, language and resource barriers often impede such information dissemination. Culturally and linguistically localized, computer-animated training videos placed on YouTube and promoted through paid advertising is a potential tool to help overcome these barriers.

Machine-supported decision-making to improve agricultural training participation and gender inclusivity.

Women comprise a significant portion of the agricultural workforce in developing countries but are often less likely to attend government sponsored training events. The objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of using machine-supported decision-making to increase overall training turnout while enhancing gender inclusivity. Using data obtained from 1,067 agricultural extension training events in Bangladesh (130,690 farmers), models were created to assess gender-based training patterns (e.

Dramatically increased accessibility and decreased cost-per-person impacts are needed for scaling IPM in Africa.

While traditional scaling for integrated pest management (IPM) in Africa requires the movement of expert trainers from village to village, these efforts are often costly, time-inefficient, hampered by distance, and became impossible under COVID-19's movement restrictions (despite tremendously increased public need for IPM-scaling knowledge). One solution to this dilemma is IPM-scaling, usable by a diversity of development actors expending limited or few resources, to deliver critical information to large numbers of people with systems-approach information and communication technologies. This paper describes one such systems-approach scaling platform, Scientific Animations Without Borders, which effectively elicited end-user solution-adoption and decreased unit costs over increasing scales in three African countries during COVID-19.

Large-scale rollout of extension training in Bangladesh: Challenges and opportunities for gender-inclusive participation.

Despite the recognized importance of women's participation in agricultural extension services, research continues to show inequalities in women's participation. Emerging capacities for conducting large-scale extension training using information and communication technologies (ICTs) now afford opportunities for generating the rich datasets needed to analyze situational factors that affect women's participation. Data was recorded from 1,070 video-based agricultural extension training events (131,073 farmers) in four Administrative Divisions of Bangladesh (Rangpur, Dhaka, Khulna, and Rajshahi).

Just participation or just participation? A participatory justice model for more successful theory of change design, implementation, and solution uptake.

While a wide consensus acknowledges that participation is critical for the successful implementation of change that improves the livelihoods of people and communities around the world, justly securing that participation from stakeholders (at both the design and implementation stages) remains a demanding problem. This paper proposes a heuristic model for increasing participation that not only helps to investigate instances of nonparticipation but also opens up alternative intervention strategies and pathways for designers and implementers to consider toward more justly increasing participation and overcoming nonparticipation. Applied to a successful case of participation in Gurúè District, Mozambique-where an 89% solution adoption of an improved postharvest seed storage method was measured two years after initial training-this paper demonstrates the key importance of designing opportunities and motivations for participation into any solutions or innovations but especially justice as a factor for successful realization of theory of change efforts (all the more so in developing nation contexts).

Measuring the impact and reach of informal educational videos on YouTube: The case of Scientific Animations Without Borders.

Given the popularity, reach, and variable accessibility of online platforms as channels for informal education by higher-education institutions (HEIs), it becomes practically and theoretically important to better understand the factors that affect the impact and reach of any such Internet-delivered ICT informal learning. Accordingly, this study analysed viewer data from one informal, science animation educational channel on currently the most-watched online platform, YouTube, to measure characteristics affecting the videos' impact and reach. Results from the study identified the most watched videos on the channel-including survival gardening using drip irrigation, charcoal water filtration, and tuberculosis prevention-and characteristic demand, time, location, and volume of video access.

Breaking out: the turning point in learning using mobile technology.

Despite considerable research on YouTube as a digital media platform, little research to date has quantified the device-type used to that online media. Analyzing access-device data for videos on one YouTube video channel-Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO), which produces educational content specifically accessible to low- or non-literate, poor, or geographically isolated learners in less developed areas of the world-the results identify the historical moments between 2015 and 2017 when mobile/smartphones, both globally and by region, crossed a tipping point to surpass all other ICT devices (including desktop PCs, laptops, and other Internet-accessing technologies) as the primary device-type for accessing SAWBO videos. Specifically, data from January 2013 to June 2018 obtained for SAWBO's YouTube channel were sampled to capture and distinguish the access device-type used and then summarized in broad global and regional categories.