Abstract
Agriculture is the mainstay of the rural sector of Sri Lanka. Farmers are resource-poor and face constraints in gaining access to information and knowledge not only to improve crop productivity but also to compete in business environment. To expose farmers to knowledge and information, University of Colombo has built an Online Diploma in Agro-technology in local languages as the first-ever attempt by Sri Lankan university system. Course lessons developed by agriculture experts were converted to an interactive digital form in online Learning Management System in Moodle. A prototype was developed and implemented with farmers all around the country. This study investigated the impacts of the program on the socio-economic improvement of farmers. Fifty farmers who are following the course were randomly selected as subjects of the study. The results showed positive impacts of the program on farmers’ income generation, entrepreneurship ability, marketing capacity, social mobilization and agri-business.
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Vidanapathirana, N.P., Hirimburegama, K., Nelka, S.A.P., Hirimburegama, K., Kim, J.H. (2012). Impact of Online Agro-technology Diploma Program and Its Future Perspectives for Improving Socio-economic Well-Being of Farmers in Sri Lanka. In: Eriksson-Backa, K., Luoma, A., Krook, E. (eds) Exploring the Abyss of Inequalities. WIS 2012. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32850-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32850-3_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32849-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32850-3
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