Loud and Clear - Why Audio Beats Video in Low-Resource Settings

A friend of mine used to provide satellite communication support for organizations working in remote areas.? One day he was in the Sahel region of Niger with some paleontologists, hunting for dinosaur fossils, when a trio of young Tuareg herders rode up on their camels to see what was going on.?

Noticing my friend’s satellite rig, they asked, “Do you have any double-A batteries?”? My friend said “Yes” and offered them a pack.? One of the herders opened his saddlebag and removed an old Sony Discman.? After changing the batteries he said “Take this” and handed my friend a CD with a hand-written label.?

The next day my friend listened to the disc, and found it contained an hour of local hip hop interspersed with podcast-style segments of the deejay and his friends discussing football, camel racing, politics, gossip from the local market, and… whatever else was going on in the area.?

What’s the lesson here for NGOs?

My company creates training and education materials for dozens of hum/dev organizations.? And when it comes to media, most clients either go high-tech - developing video and interactive content then trying to find ways to deliver it to people with limited Internet connectivity - or they go low-tech - and just print flipbooks for instructors to hold up during workshops.?

However, few of them are interested in the “mid-tech” option of audio-only content.? Which always seems like a missed opportunity, given radio broadcasts and MP3s are the primary medium for news and entertainment in many of the contexts where NGOs operate.?

So, what makes audio such a great format for learning content, both in general and for “low resource” settings in particular???

It’s (relatively) easy and inexpensive to produce.

• Compared to animation or live video, there are far fewer variables to worry about when producing audio.??
• It can take animators days to create visuals to accompany narration.? And when video editors chop up a recorded interview for brevity, they have to do things like toggle between different camera angles to cover up the cuts.? But neither of those are an issue with audio.?
• All in all, it takes less than half as much time and effort to assemble a high-quality audio clip than an equivalent amount of video.?

You can listen to audio content while doing other things.

• Even if you do have time and budget to produce video, audio still has other unique advantages.? Notably, audio is the one media format you can easily consume while doing other things.??
• Nearly half of the human brain is directly or indirectly involved in processing visual information.? This leaves us with hardly any bandwidth for other tasks while we’re watching a video, reading a book or assembling a jigsaw puzzle.
• Audio, by contrast, is less cognitively demanding.? And most of us can listen to music or podcasts while working, exercising, driving, or cleaning the house.
• This makes audio great for delivering training content to busy audiences.? When my company designed a training program for advisors at one of the world’s largest investment banks, many of them said “The only time I have to consume media not directly related to work is when I’m (riding the train to the office / walking my newborn around the block / at my desk filling out forms), usually I’ll listen to music or an audiobook.”
• And the same was true for other audiences like telecommunications electricians (they had plenty of time to listen while driving to client sites), and smallholder farmers (most of them had headphones on when working in the field).?

It’s easy to distribute to low-resource settings.

• Audio files tend to be a fraction of the size of an equivalent high-quality video (e.g. 15 megabytes for a high quality fifteen-minute MP3 versus 300 megabytes for the same amount of standard HD video).???
• In practical terms, it would take someone in Sudan with an average mobile connection just 24 seconds to download a fifteen minute audio attachment from WhatsApp, versus 8 minutes to download the equivalent video - assuming their connection remains stable.
• And even if someone was willing and able to wait 10 minutes for a video download, there’s still the matter of storage space.? Today’s phones actually have less file storage capacity than phones did five or ten years ago (assuming most people will stream data as-needed instead of downloading it).? And most training participants won’t want to clog up their device with work-related videos, especially if it causes problems with their other apps.?
• Meanwhile, audio content doesn’t have to be distributed digitally via the internet: it can also be disseminated the old-fashioned way, over the radio.? From New York to Padang Bolak, radio stations everywhere are always looking for content to fill the day, and most are happy to promote their sponsors’ agenda.??
• For example, my company helped an agricultural development NGO assemble a media kit to promote better pig farming practices in rural Uganda.? It consisted of a short booklet and a sheet of talking points, which were provided to radio deejays in farming communities throughout the region.? The deejays would then invite local farmers onto their shows to chat about pig farming, while making sure to drop the key messages as appropriate throughout the discussion.???
• In another campaign addressing financial literacy for agro-input dealers in the region, we simply scripted and recorded infomercials, with local actors voicing the host and the interviewees.??
• Together, those programs added up to hours of training content that was able to be distributed to a wide audience, no Internet required.? ?

It offers on-demand learning for audiences with limited literacy.?

• Many NGOs work in communities with low literacy rates, which makes audio a great alternative to printed materials.? And while plenty of organizations use radio advertisements for behavior change communications (e.g. “wash your hands”, “get vaccinated”, “make sure your kids get enough Vitamin A”), comparatively few of them use audio for training and education.? Instead, most have staff go from town to town, holding live workshops with community members.??
• But while in-person delivery has its advantages, it is also expensive and slow, with an inherently limited reach.? By creating audio content, organizations can reach more people at a lower cost.??
• And audio can also be used to complement live workshops.? For instance, an organization could provide audio recordings to members of a local agricultural collectives or women’s savings group for them to listen to and discuss prior to a visit from a traveling training facilitator.? That way, most people will already have some background on the subject matter and the workshop time can be used for discussion, practice exercises, and other activities instead of rote lecture / presentation.?

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Hopefully this article offered some inspiration for how your organization can take advantage of audio for reaching your training audiences - regardless of location, internet connectivity, or literacy.? And if you need assistance with developing or distributing audio content, please consider reaching out to Sonata Learning for a consultation.