Awareness about agricultural web education technology at farmer's level - An experimental study

This experimental study was conducted to identify the impact of web-education on knowledge gain and symbolic adoption of farmers in six village of Tamil Nadu using expost-facto research design. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) website (www.tnau.ac.in) was selected as a learning module for experiment. Totally one hundred and eighty respondents were selected for this study. The respondents were expected to have a minimum educational qualification of fifth standard and above because web-education required basic literacy for better learning. More than half of the farmers (77.78%) were not aware of any single agricultural web sites, followed by one-third of the farmers (15.00%) aware of up to two agricultural web sites. About (5.00%) of the farmers had awareness of 3 to 5 agricultural websites. Least percentage of farmers (2.22%) were found with awareness of more than five agricultural web sites. Two -third of the farmers (72.50%) had internet connection for non-agricultural usage, followed by (27.50%) of the farmers for agricultural purpose. Among the web site users, about two-fifth (77.50 %) of the farmers were found to use the website once in a week followed by (22.50%) with once in two days and none of them used it daily. The study revealed that respondents were more satisfied and eager to learn through web-education. This indicates that they were inclined towards accepting cyber extension approaches.