Case Study: Message Not Delivered
continued...
‘Keeping up’
Because the production is performed, rather than pre-recorded, actions, behaviours, music, sounds and
discussion can be revised to ensure their continued relevance. In the case of Message Not Delivered (observed
during 2018), the actors performed the ‘dab’ (a very contemporary trend likely to resonate with the target
audience) and listened to current music. Clever and reflexive choices like these have the potential to engage a
young audience and emphasise that the issues are relevant to that group in particular¹. It is crucial, therefore,
that these choices ‘keep up’ with changes in trends to maintain the audience interest. Outdated trends would
allow young people to disconnect from the production, potentially reducing the impact of the approach. The
Dab was soon replaced by The Floss. By now, either of these actions would appear outdated.
‘Real life’ examples
The involvement of emergency service personnel in the production brings credibility and personal experience 2 .
When these individuals are local, familiar, and talk about places and people that the audience will be familiar
with, they are likely to be particularly easy for the audience to relate to and trusted as conveying ‘real life’
information rather than ‘stories’. Talking about local roads, areas or even adding in the school name makes it
more ‘real’ and is feasible because the input is live. The production also uses real-life voice-overs from those
that have been directly affected by road death. This is hard-hitting, but can be effective when followed by
discussion of not just the consequences of distracted driving, but strategies to avoid suffering the same fate
(see p96).
Effective Workshops
Research has found that increasing group size
has a detrimental impact upon the extent to
which a learner interacts with and accommodates
the information presented 3 (see page 81). This
is particularly important for something such as
a workshop within this context where we want
students to engage with and understand the
information presented/discussed. Where possible,
working with smaller groups of people rather than
whole or half year groups would be an ‘ideal’, to
ensure students take as much as possible from that
workshop.
¹
2
3
80
Mayhew, D.R. and Simpson, H.M., (2002). The safety value of driver education and training. Injury prevention, 8(suppl 2), pp.ii3-ii8.
Stapel, D.A. and Velthuijsen, A.S., (1996). “ Just as if it happened to me”: The impact of vivid and self-relevant information on risk judgments. Journal of Social
and Clinical Psychology, 15(1), p.102-119.
Caspi, A., Gorsky, P. and Chajut, E., (2003). The influence of group size on nonmandatory asynchronous instructional discussion groups. The Internet and
Higher Education, 6(3), pp.227-240.