Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to 1) develop a non-formal education program to strengthen consumer protection networks for health of community organizations; 2) experiment with a non-formal education program to strengthen consumer protection networks for health of community organizations; and 3) study the factors related to the implementation of the developed non-formal education program to strengthen consumer protection networks for health of community organizations. This study was based on the Research and Development which was developed by means of the collaborative and connectivism concepts. The population was 1,250 members of the Federation of Bangkok Consumer Protection Club, out of which twenty-four members were used as the samples through the purposive sampling. The one group pretest-posttest experimental design was applied in this study. The program implementation both for learning and practicing at the actual experimental site lasted seven weeks with a total of one hundred and eight hours. The results were as follows: 1. The networking collaborative steps of the non-formal education program to strengthen consumer protection networks for health of community organizations consisted of the following stages: 1) studying the community organization context; 2) studying the community organization goal; 3) developing the education program; 4) preparing the learning resources; 5) providing an orientation for the learners; 6) identifying the learning environment; 7) providing the individual learning activities according to the learning environment; 8) providing the collaborative learning activities; 9) revising the learning environment so that it took account of the related factors; 10) evaluating the collaborative learning; and 11) evaluating and disseminating the program. The education programs consists of 6 topics that are 1) planning 2) information literacy 3) the psychology of communication 4) the community working networks 5) consumers health protection 6) knowledge integration and health consumer protection project development. 2. The results of the experiment indicated that 1) the learners average post-test score of knowledge, skill, attitude, and abilities to strengthen consumer protection networks after participation in the non-formal education program was shown to be higher than their pre-test score at the significant level of 0.05 and learners can identify the consumer protection activities correctly and variously; 2) the result from implementing the program by the learners showed that the participating people rated the activities with the highest satisfaction; and 3) the evaluation of the non-formal education program by learners group discussion and interview with the guest lecturers found that the non-formal education program was developed properly, every step of the program was designed properly and supported the non-formal education goal. The evaluation of the usefulness of having the consumer protection networks for health of community organizations by people in the community had the mean of high usefulness. 3. The factors related to the implementation of the developed non-formal education program to strengthen consumer protection networks for health of community organizations were: the strong leadership of the leader; the diversity of the learners background; the actual practice within the group; the access to information on the internet; the access to the media that disseminates the knowledge; the implementation that corresponds with the strategy of the related government organizations; the communication and the interaction; and the learning content that focuses on the communication psychology.