|
Abstract |
COVID-19 pandemic and the Social distancing, there have been inevitable changes in Koreas Forest education program that usually provided face-to-face interaction. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the changes in forest education programs during COVID-19 and determine the effectiveness of forest services in the online communication environment, which have not been experienced before. The real-time 2 hours online programs were developed and implemented by nationally certified 30 forest education experts from August 8 to October 31, 2020. Program participants communicated with forest education experts through online screens and chats, and 4202 people in total participated in 100 different programs were surveyed and analyzed. Participants could join in the broadcast with the link sent by the project institute. The programs were classified totally by educational method(Figure 1a), topic(Figure 1b), environmental characteristics of the venue, and geographic location. The forest education experts behavior and participants responses were followed up simultaneously, and the satisfaction levels were analyzed after completion of the programs. According to the study, three types of the method by only voice(58.0%), alone(12.0%), more than one person(30.0%) showed up. With regard to the topic of program development, mainly included somewhat passive programs such as walking(37.6%) and eco-crafts(20.5%). Parks(31.2%) and forests(28.6%) were preferred as venues, and the majority of the programs were conducted at the outskirts of cities(62.9%). The interview for the satisfaction revealed that the forest interpreters were dissatisfied with dealing with excessive amounts of the program running time for 2 hours. The participants were not happy with the quality of the broadcasts image, and the project institute experienced technical issues with the transmission of the broadcast network. However, under the limited conditions because of the COVID-19, the participants were able to experience the natural scenery, and the forest interpreters had the opportunity to proceed online programs were answered positively. In conclusion, the capabilities of forest interpreters and types of program content provided in the offline era have evolved to provide high-quality video and broadcast content in the current era of online communication. It was concluded that changes are essential to meet the increased demand for online forest education programs. Further research in on-line forest programs should develop and confirm these initial findings by revealing the effectiveness of each programs. |
|