Integrating Flood Education Miniature and Interactive E-Learning in a Prototype of Flood Learning Kit for Knowledge Resilience Among School Children

Abstract

Children are highly vulnerable to climate change and disaster impacts, while those living in marginal environments and situations of poverty are the most vulnerable. Schools that are supposed to create a safe learning environment for students have become a vulnerable place when hit by flood during school hours. Children would be in danger if facing with a flood situation without parents or adults with them to help and lacking in the knowledge and preparation in response toward flood disaster. This paper discusses the potential of developing a personalized child-focused and child-led disaster risk reduction educational approaches and techniques. This was done by intervening the customized flood education miniature and interactive e-learning into a disaster educational module to evaluate the school children’s flood preparedness knowledge levels. A quasi-experimental study was carried out among 110 schoolchildren whose school and house are located at the flood-prone areas. The prototype learning kit was integrated with both (hardware) miniatures learning kit and (software) interactive e-learning modules to provide a low-cost, portable and interactive hands-on learning platform to the treatment group, whereas the control group was not provided with any learning platform. This prototype is designed by integrating four sub-elements: (i) general flood knowledge, (ii) flood warning, (iii) assemble flood preparedness kit, (iv) readiness of response to flood. The result of this study shows that there is no significant difference in the baseline knowledge level on flood preparedness between treatment and control group during the pre-intervention program. Following the intervention program, the pretesting score of the treatment group was adjusted, the (i) “general flood knowledge” shows no significant effect of the prototype learning kit to the treatment group (p = 0.270). However, “flood warning” (p < 0.001), “assemble flood preparedness kit” (p < 0.001) and “readiness of response to flood” (p < 0.031) show a significant increase in knowledge level after introducing the learning kit to the treatment group. Since school has a tangible role in building a resilience community, it is recommended to initiate the disaster education at school with the flood learning kit that encourages interactive problem-based learning with imaginary simulations of different case scenarios to facilitate knowledge transfer. In conclusion, this study showed that it is positive to integrate knowledge, innovation and education into personalized disaster risk learning approach to initiate a culture of disaster resilience and enhance risk awareness among school children.