Educators commissioning materials are faced with a range of educational and commercial issues. The resolution of these depends in part on their ability to develop strong and clear descriptions of the materials required, and especially of the educational and performance issues that must be covered.
Educational Issues
Educational materials have to conform to appropriate standards in regard to content and performance.
Congruence with Intended Outcomes
Materials have to be prepared by writers, designers, and practitioners that are suitable for assisting with the achievement of the stated objectives of the programme. Even if they are prepared for a very limited aspect of the programme, there needs to be a set of educational objectives against which the appropriateness of the materials can be judged.
For this reason, it is ill-advised to order materials in advance of the generation of educational objectives. There may be times when the time constraints require materials to be ordered soon after educational objectives have been set, and before the full programme has been designed.
But this should be avoided at all costs. There are many examples of posters, audiovisual materials, textbooks, and so on being ordered and then found to be surplus to the requirements of the final programme. Some organisation have tried using inappropriate materials, simply because they were there, to the detriment of the programme.
Appropriate Level
The educational level at which materials should be prepared is not that of those commissioning the materials. They are designed for use out in the field, and for the learner group. Materials that have to be approved by a board, especially if it is a board of governance rather than a group of educators, often err on the side of impressing the board rather than meeting the needs of the learners.
This may ensure that budgets are made available, but does no service to those who must be educated. For this reason, those doing the commissioning should explain precisely for whom the materials are intended. And this explanation should be made available to those who must approve materials in advance of the materials being seen.
In general, those commissioning materials have different expectations about those materials and have a different knowledge base and life experience from the learners. They are seldom representative. If it is possible to establish representative groups of learners to assess materials, this can obviously help, as can initial field testing.
Appropriate Language and Symbols
Materials have to use appropriate language and symbols. In multilingual and multicultural societies, materials translated from a master copy can run into problems. But even materials prepared in countries where there are dominant languages and cultures can miscue in their combination of words and symbols.
These need to be tested in advance of the commissioning process; and there should also be opportunities during the production of materials, especially display materials, for a review.
Clear Instructional Texts and Directions for Use
When commissioning books and instructional texts, educators may be inclined to separately hand over text and illustrations to a publisher, assuming that they will design the publication in such a way that it becomes a coherent whole. This assumption should be tested, and if there is any doubt, either an instructional text should be handed over in completed form, or educators should review materials during the layout stages and up until the pre-print moment. They should have to sign off explicitly on a "mock-up" of the product before it is handed over for final production.
There are too many possibilities for developing confusion amongst learners and trainers to allow educators to leave these to non-educators.
In addition to the care that must be taken over the layout and clarity of instructional texts, materials can seldom be handed to those who have not prepared them or been involved in preparing them without an orientation to their use. And this orientation may not be possible face to face.
Expensive posters prepared for one setting can become waste paper if used in a different setting. Training-of-trainers materials handed out directly to ordinary learners turn into very expensive and unreadable lesson notes.
Often, educators commission the basic materials and, having received them from the producers, whether a publisher, printer, writer, or designer, discover they need to produce a second set of materials, a short manual or set of instructions for use. These are then rushed off in-house without the care given to the original.
Commissioning briefs should take account of the full package of materials that is required.
Appropriate Format
Educators need to know in advance what is possible and make use of these specifications in their planning. Educators have no time or cost leeway.
If they determine that a poster should be a particular shape, or a folder for an educational package a particular colour or weight of paper, only to discover that this material can either not be sourced, or can only be obtained by cuts that result in wastage, they have done a disservice to the programme.
Some formats for materials that are more appropriate than others. And commissioning original designs should proceed from the assumption that the educational purpose will never take second place to the design considerations.
Performance Issues
In relation to performance, educators will need to consider:
A flier might be designed to be read once and then discarded. In fact, it may even be necessary to design and produce it in such a way that it can be recycled or that it biodegrades rapidly. On the other hand, a leaflet might be designed for use by several readers, not just the original recipient. This presumes that the recipient will pass on the leaflet to friends, family members, or neighbours. In this case, the paper must be sufficiently strong to accommodate excessive handling.
A training guide is likely to be opened and closed often. It will be the subject of copying and note taking; will be in and out of briefcases; on and off tables and floors; and is likely to be close to food and drink. It also requires more durable production.
Will posters be outside? If they are, how long do they have to survive? Flip charts may have to travel on buses or in taxis. If they do, will the cover fall off or the pages start stripping.
Commissioning specifications need to take account of and describe the likely use and the required level of durability for all materials. The durability of packaging may also need to be taken into consideration to ensure that materials arrive at their final destination in good condition. Where durability is required, it might need to be over-engineered. In other words, educators will make it last in the worst conditions rather than the optimum conditions.
Whatever the materials, they will have to be read, whether words and illustrations read by literate people, or symbols and illustrations read by the illiterate.
It is essential, therefore, that educational materials are completely and comprehensively legible. Smudged printing, bleeding colours that obscure foreground and background, pictures that are incorrectly scanned or lose their definition because of the wrong dots per inch specification, or posters that use the wrong font size, the list could go on with disasters experienced by educators working with inexperienced production companies, and even with those with some experience.
- Storage, Distribution, and Ease of Use.
When materials come back from the printers, they have to be distributed. Suddenly, the envelope that was going to be used is discovered to be too light, the decision to fold posters results increases that disturb the ink at crucial places and the stack of manuals so high, staff are in danger of avalanches. Questions of distribution have to be considered in advance of production (see Storage and Distribution) but the question of packaging has to be considered during the commissioning phase and by educators themselves, because it impacts on other related questions. As noted earlier, the durability of the packaging materials will have to be addressed. The number of units per package will also need to be specified. And, delivery and distribution labels and instructions may need to be included as part of the packaging.
For these reasons, it is often best to use a single printer who can then pre-pack, label, assemble, and protect (by plastic shrink wrap or paper wrapping) the materials in the correct way.
Once educational materials reach their destination, they have to be stored by users, retrieved from storage for use, and maintained by users. Users faced with large cardboard rolls, cardboard, plastic, fabric portfolios, or crates full of paper so heavy that they require a trolley to move them, can resent the industriousness of the designers and education team rather than welcome the materials.
Those who have to travel with the materials may find themselves forced to go by road rather than air, by private car rather than public transport, or may have to bring learners to them rather than go to where learners are.
These questions cannot be answered in a general sense, as they are determined by what is available in countries, and by what is required of a particular set of materials.
In some countries, lightweight materials such as corrugated plastics are available or special laminated or fabric papers. Other countries have to make do with what they have.
As a result, materials should be considered that require limited distribution, can be transferred by instruction and then created at the point of use, can be carried by individual educators when they move around the country, or can be boxed with other election materials.
Materials intended for use by citizens and voters, and by younger people in particular, need to be safe. This may not be a major concern with publications, but materials produced for simulation games and for display need to be prepared in ways that make them fire resistant, difficult to break, non-toxic, and so on.
Once this matter is considered, the safety, or rather security, of the materials also has to be dealt with. With the possible but unlikely exception of some high level training materials, educational materials are designed to be available to the public.
However, they are valuable if only as a source of recyclable paper and this value may increase in poorer countries where resources are scarce. So, care has to be taken to ensure that the manner in which they are produced encourages and enhances their safekeeping. Materials so large that they must live outside, cloth banners hung in vulnerable places, consignments that require shipping in advance of educators, and other similar arrangements, can all result in unnecessary loss.
While these may seem matters of concern to be addressed only after receipt of the materials, consideration during the preparation and production stage will assist in reducing security hazards.
Contractual Matters
In general a commissioning process will involve the development of a detailed brief, a letter of agreement or contract by which a supplier of goods or services agrees to deliver the product on a particular day and under particular conditions, and a system by which this commission is managed.
Detailed Briefs
Educators will prepare a brief in which all the necessary details, some of which were considered previously, are described. When they do not have all the necessary detail, they should negotiate with the potential suppliers on the basis of a draft and then firm this up in a final brief.
This brief will form part of any contract, so it should be explicit and unambiguous. It could become the cause of conflict if it is not; and could assist in resolving any conflicts in favour of those doing the commissioning if it is unambiguous.
Experienced suppliers may have a detailed order form or cover sheet of their own that includes a checklist with the necessary technical specifications. Educators unused to the specification language should ask that it be explained.
Contracts
Several formal contracts can be used as examples for those involved in commissioning materials. But these must conform to the legal requirements of the country in which they are prepared and signed.
However, even small commissions should be covered by a letter of agreement that includes the following:
- lays out the terms of the agreement
- the product required
- the objectives it is designed to meet
- the standards it must live up to
- the deadlines that must be adhered to
- the manner in which any disputes and faults will be attended to
Suppliers may wish to use their version of such contracts or letters of agreements as they regularly enter into contracts. An educator might do so infrequently and may be used to a verbal discussion only. Both of these should be avoided unless there considerable trust between supplier and the programme; and educators should prepare (or review closely) any agreements themselves.
If a formal agreement is not possible (it might be an agreement with a community carpenter to sink two poles so that a banner can be hung), there should be an understanding of how the agreement came about and a proper record kept by the educator or the education team.
Management System
How the educator manages these contracts and commissions, whether large and formal, or small and informal is discussed in Managing Contracts.
