Research shows that volunteers who have strong relationships with program staff and with other volunteers are more likely to continue volunteering in their role. However, with reduced resources and cultural shifts that make face-to-face activities harder to sustain, it can be difficult to maintain the same level of relatedness previously afforded to Extension volunteer programs. The advent of Web 2.0 tools offers staff an opportunity to support volunteers in new ways using technology. This session will describe a research study that examined the ways in which an online community housed in eXtension supported volunteer relationships. We will explore the benefit to contributing to the community through conversation and participating more passively through reading the conversations of others. Participants will characteristics of volunteers who flourished in this environment as well as critical components necessary for a virtual community to flourish.

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We often think of communities of practices being made up of educators and researchers from land-grant universities. Some communities of practices have members from the military or from government agencies. In this session, we will give an example of how an individual with his own business connected with Military Families Learning Network and Network Literacy Community of Practice and how all involved have benefited. While both communities of practices value contributions of the public, Jerry is regular contributor. We will begin our discussion by explaining how Jerry Buchko first connected to these two communities of practices. Then we will describe how he connects and contributes. We will also explore how his involvement has provided benefits to him, his private practice, and these two communities of practices’ work and activities. We will conclude the session by giving ideas for other communities of practice to open their membership to others outside of education and government.

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In 2012, The Nebraska Supreme Court approved the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension online class “Co-Parenting For Successful Kids” because it is a hardship for some parents to participate in an in-person class. Since 2008, in-person classes have been mandated for parents experiencing custody/divorce issues. Nebraska Extension teamed up with eXtension and Nebraska Education Television (NET) to develop the class. Parents have 30 days to take the 3-hour class. The official certificate needed by the court is emailed to the participant within three working days of class completion. Cost is $50 per person and includes video instruction, interactive pages, and chapter reviews. Content is University research-based and includes experiences gained by teaching 8,200 parents in person since 1999. During the first five months, over 200 parents have graduated. Evaluation is in process, including six-month follow-up. Preliminary follow up data will be available in October 2012. Initial participant feedback includes comments such as “I really learned how badly divorce and separation could affect the children”; “This is the first parenting class I have ever had.” The eXtension presentation will include lessons learned related to working with multiple Extension partners which are transferrable to broader users.

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North Carolina State University, Oregon State University, and The Ohio State University have all launched eXtension’s Ask an Expert (AaE) widget statewide. But each chose to march on a different path to implement the system, using different approaches to wrangling questions, rewarding responders, using volunteers, and promotion. This session will provide brief overviews from each state along with time for discussion and questions. Participants will be exposed to contrasting ways of using AaE and technology to reach clientele online, and encouraged to find the best fit for implementing the system in their state.

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This session will demonstrate and explain three free and easy Smart phone tools Extension educators can use both to streamline work and use with clients. Presenters will describe their experiences with all three in Extension work. Quick Response Codes are a useful tool, both for marketing programs and as a new method for providing information for stakeholders. Flyers, brochures, business cards, and door signs can contain codes that smart phone users can scan to access additional information—and analytics track the number of users. Expensify is a free PC and mobile app to streamline recording of expenses by scanning receipts, mapping to track and record mileage, and analyze expenses. Clients of all kinds who track expenses, whether agriculture or small business-related would also find this app a useful tool. The square is a small device that turns a smart phone or ipad into a credit card reader. Low transaction costs (2.75%), and the ability to take payments anywhere make this free device perfect for accepting credit card payments for books, field days, programs, and other revenue-generating activities. Payments hit the bank the next business day. These three smart phone tools can increase efficiency and effectiveness of Extension educators.

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Back in 2010, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Backyard Wisdom was a solid little radio show that needed to be active in social media. Backyard Wisdom’s host, Maggie Lawrence, is a communications specialist with a passion for gardening. It was clear to her that to get the most social media has to offer you have to do more than dip your toe in the pool. You have to jump in and join the party. For the last two years, Maggie has been living in the social media world using outlets such as blogging, podcasts, Twitter and Facebook. Recently, she has added Pinterest, Google+ and other tools to her toolbox. The results are clear: a more than 300 percent increase in visits to the Backyard Wisdom website in 2011 from 2010. Data from the first half of 2012 shows significant growth over 2011. The difference between 2010 and the last two years? How often and how effectively social media was used to promote the site. These uses of social media have enabled Extension to share research‐based information to a much broader audience than was originally being reached when Backyard Wisdom existed solely as a radio program.
In this session, Maggie Lawrence will share tools and tips that have helped make the Backyard Wisdom social media effort a success. Specifically, she will talk about the importance of living in the social media community that you are trying to reach rather than being the 21st century town crier who shouts a message and then disappears until there is a new message to be broadcast.
This session will show you how living in your social media world can generate significant and documentable results.

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Assessing complicated topics like federally subsidized crop insurance, federal conservation programs, farm taxation and financial management can be very difficult for farmers. Also, person-to-person explanation of complicated topics can be expensive in terms of both government agency staff and farmers time and travel commitments. Can interactive software tools be created that assist farmers with such complicated topics? Are their important lessons that can be learned from the process of software tool development that assures farmers will use the tools developed? This working smarter case study will present the challenges and benefits of software tool development in making complex topics more easily understood and manageable for farmers and ranchers. Based on the idea of Turbo Tax which is used for federal and state individual tax filing, the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) with support from the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) developed a unique software tool called the Adjusted Gross Revenue Lite (AGR-Lite) Wizard. This tool has been very successful in helping agricultural producers assess the multiple risks of farming and understanding a complicated crop insurance product. The presentation will include a demonstration of the AGR-Lite Wizard tool as well as the important story of its development.

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Once folks understand what it is, Ask an Expert is an easy sell. But are you marketing it effectively to build your program? This session will explore a variety of creative ways to market Ask an Expert both internally and externally. We’ll share examples of marketing plans, and how to build a branded identity. We’ll also demonstrate how we are using video, radio PSAs, brochures, flyers, press releases, presentations, and social media—and even lip balm– to get the word out. What worked? What didn’t? What could the future hold? We’ll give you several easy-to-initiate take home ideas for marketing Ask an Expert in your state. We’ll also discuss how we might share marketing resources. So come prepared to share your efforts and ideas about creatively marketing Ask an Expert!

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Like humans, production animals are prone to the impacts of climate change, and methods are being researched for producers to decrease their relative contribution of greenhouse gases. A national team of extension educators is developing a web-based educational course to provide extension agents and educators with the knowledge and tools to work with their clients on adaptation and mitigation practices to help livestock and poultry producers cope with the changing climate. The educational modules are web-based using the Moodle platform and include introductory materials followed by specie & region specific information on how farmers and ranchers deal with changing climate and animal management. Each course module includes presentations, voice over commentary, video, interactive participation, certification test, downloadable extension materials, links for further reading, and complete bibliography. The presenter(s) will discuss methods used for developing a national curriculum that is locally accessible and relevant, demonstrate selected course materials, and provide opportunities for audience input on course improvement.

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The Back to the Kitchen social media campaign, which focused on utilizing social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to educate the online public about the importance of family mealtime and how to realistically increase cooking and healthy eating habits at home, took place in September, 2012 during National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. The purpose of the campaign was two-fold; 1) to increase the online impact and publicity Ohio State University Extension has with the general public while providing them with information on a timely subject and 2) to serve as a professional development opportunity for Ohio State University Extension Family & Consumer Science professionals who were interested in learning more about utilizing social media as a program tool or taking their existing knowledge of social media to the next level.
This breakout session will explore the planning and development process behind the campaign, as well as the experience of implementation during the month of September – from both the campaign director and participant perspectives. This session will focus on how to use various social media tools to conduct a program-area-wide campaign on a specific topic. Come ready to discuss how educating the public in this manor could affect the traditional definition of “programming” in our field.

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Questions are submitted from every state to eXtension’s Ask an Expert. Finding the best person to answer promptly may be easy for those who know who’s who in their state and subject matter, but harder from someone across the country. We need one or more people from each state to help as Question Wranglers. This session will be a panel of active Question Wranglers talking about what they do and how they do it. Come see what it takes and how you can get involved!
Question Wranglers are volunteers that monitor the incoming questions to the eXtension Ask an Expert system and route them to an appropriate subject matter expert for answering. Wranglers also take responsibility for monitoring whether questions from the public have been answered in a timely manner, follow-up with experts to make sure questions are being answered, and where necessary reassign questions to other experts. We QWs do our work at Ask an Expert (aae.extension.org). We hold monthly Question Wrangler Meetups usually on the 4th Tuesday of each month. Join us!

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Google Apps (which you can login to with your eXtensionID@extension.org and your eXtension password) makes it very easy to collaborate with others. With Google Apps, you can share and simultaneously edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more. You can also share calendars. With any of these, you can give some people view privileges and others full editing privileges. Just think how powerful it could be to never have to send an email attachment again, everyone seeing the current version of the project. Or imagine if you could let your colleagues see when you are busy or available and create and share project calendars.

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Social media has a niche area of informing people during and after a disaster. The first successful large scale use of social media after a disaster was in Joplin after an F5 tornado totally destroyed 1/3 of the city of Joplin on May 22, 2011. Traditional methods of communications were destroyed. However, texting and wireless Internet service was accessible through smart phones. MU Extension assisted in developing the Facebook page joplintornadoinfo. The page was set up two hours after the tornado and still serves as a major link for people to communicate and share information with the 48,000+ followers of the page. This same model was then used as flooding approached northwest MO with MoFloodInfo and when Branson was hit on leap day 2012 (there are still over 17,000 followers of BransonTornadoInfo). This presentation will share the successes of these sites and how MU Extension responded then and continues to work with volunteers in managing these pages. Participants can also get a copy of “Using Social Media in Disaster Recovery.” This MU Extension publication has been distributed by FEMA, received national media coverage, and has been downloaded over 10,000 times since it became available in March of 2012.

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Americans are increasing their use of the internet for news and information, with approximately 4 out of 5 adults using the Internet and nearly half of all adults using a smartphone. In production agriculture this means there are approximately 2.4 million farmers and ranchers on the Internet and about 1.5 million with smartphones. Additionally, more than 80% of large producers are connected with broadband, providing the ability to receive lots of information and make faster decisions. Roughly half the principal farm operators are over 45 years old. Conversely, just under half the principle operators are under 45 years old and their numbers are growing. How do you find them online, engage them to learn their needs, and provide them impactful solutions? This session offers three tools and three processes that can help improve your approach to: discovering an audience, developing a dialog with them, creating solutions for their problems, and measuring outcomes.

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Every educator knows that attendees rapidly forget large amounts of the information provided in lectures.. How can one create “sticky” teaching messages that will be both memorable and useful to learners? In this session, six principles from the book Made to Stick (Heath & Heath, 2008) will be adapted to a teaching and learning environment both in-classroom and online through a host of relevant examples and problems. Instructors can make repeated use of these principles to guide and conduct their teaching in any discipline.

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In eXtension, our clientele depend on our collective expertise in a number of different ways — such as reference material when they search a topic online or as training resources for teaching others. However, eXtension can also serve as the knowledge base for engaging games and tools. Jeanne Gleason and Barbara Chamberlin will share the ways in which their games, interactive programs and simulations have impacted Extension clientele by presenting learning environments, increasing knowledge and changing attitudes of users. They will share processes for designing, budgeting and integrating tools with our extension CoP work.

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Sometime over the next year, more Internet content will be accessed by mobile devices than by desktop platforms. This transformation marks the latest technological and societal paradigm shift to confront Extension. In this session, we will explore how Extension at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln positioned itself to develop mobile applications that effectively deliver research and education to consumers in a constantly changing technological environment. Topics include: developing a mobile content strategy (video, web and social media), understanding your options to select the right solution(s), setting best practices for working with educators, determining infrastructure requirements, assessing potential pitfalls and navigating distribution networks.

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While we meet every month, this will give members of Institutional Teams who attend the NeXC a chance to share, network, and learn from each other. Bring your ideas and an open mind as we look to our peers for strategies, tactics, and plans that worked in various institutions. We can all use a fresh perspective!

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Ask an Expert (AaE) has been rethought and rebuilt from the ground up. Come learn about the new version. We’ll cover a bunch of new features such as the introduction of groups, tagging, widgets and forms, simpler routing and assignments, plus one of the biggest changes — the ability to share questions and answers publicly at the new Ask site. There will also be time for a Q&A and feedback on the app.

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Social media can be a powerful tool for Extension educators to expand their reach and engage with clients. Communities of practice and state systems are increasingly using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media as part of their programming efforts. This presents challenges for program evaluation as traditional evaluation methods rely on information not always available in social media. This session situates social media in the context of program evaluation and offers tips and suggestions for evaluating social media activities. Emphasis will be placed on tools to help measure reach and engagement through social media.

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Extension educators and professionals intuitively understand that we will be called upon to build new models to compete and survive in this new communication and economic order. The question remains: How? What should these models be and how should they function? Part of the answer may lie with open science, which portends the greatest change to scientific inquiry and research since Roger Bacon first began articulating a vision for systematic empirical investigation in the 13th century. A panel composed of several Extension employees with unique professional perspectives will discuss this emerging trend and both its promise and peril for the future of Cooperative Extension.

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Launched June 28, 2011, Google+ is a social networking service provided by Google, Inc. As a social network, Google+ shares traits (ability to share updates, links, photos, and videos) with other large social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Whether it’s connecting with colleagues and friends, finding topical information, or discovering new people with shared interests, Google+ is an amazing tool for building your online network. If you’re not sure what Google+ is, check out our Google+, what’s the fuss? blog post from last year. (bit.ly/gpluswhatsthefuss) This session will provide an introduction to Google+ with a focus on creating your account, completing your profile, and beginning to use the many features Google+ has to offer. It may be helpful to you to create a Google+ account before the session. We’ve posted instructions in this publicly accessible document: Google+ sign-up instructions (bit.ly/gplussignupinstructions)

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Healthy Environments = Healthy People! Imagine learning sustainable living at your kitchen table and your teacher is on his own front porch! After a failed attempt to hold a face-to-face weekend sustainability conference for families in rural Iowa, Extension Family specialists opted for a virtual conference using Adobe Connect to reach people statewide. We converted the original conference topics and speakers into 6 monthly broadcast presentations. The 90-minute sessions featured experts in Local Food Systems, Connecting with Nature, Green Schools, Rainscaping, Edible Landscapes and Compost 101. Anchored in family development theory, the sustainability theme resonated with a variety of audiences. Twenty-three families from 9 urban and rural counties engaged in the monthly discussions focused on healthy people, environments and economies. Evaluations indicate increased knowledge and skills relating to environment and human health including human ecological footprints, and improved familial wellbeing. The interactive sessions included virtual breakout rooms, chats, note pods, polls, videos and microphone/headsets for participatory learning. Sessions were recorded and archived for participants who could not attend or for those who wanted to re-view the material. Extension offices were available for those with limited access to internet. Focus groups are enthusiastically designing the next virtual conference series.

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County support staff members have long been the ‘face’ of our Extension systems. They are the first people the public interacts with when visiting an Extension office or the first voice heard when someone calls with a question. With fewer Educators/Agents covering more territory, these county-based staff members often have no one to turn to with questions. To better prepare Michigan State University Extension support staff to help clients find information and answers, a one-hour hands-on training in Adobe Connect was developed and offered to over 80 county and campus staff members in small groups. They practiced asking questions, searching for information, and finding experts using features of eXtension and MSUE. This session will describe the process used in Adobe Connect and the short term outcomes of the trainings. It will also serve as a forum for others to share creative ways their states have dealt with shrinking human resources and expanding needs for knowledge and information at the local level. A handout will be shared with screen shots of the adobe connect layouts used. Another handout called “Finding Information in eXtension: A Guide for Support Staff” will also be shared.

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Scoop.it! is a curation platform that enables users to collect news, articles, and other online sources, and share them on a custom-themed Scoop.it! site. I have been curating content on the Working Differently in Extension Scoop.it! site for more than a year. I’ll introduce you to Scoop.it! and share my experiences curating on the platform.

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Using data from Google Analytics, we look into factors that are associated with article and Ask an Expert (AaE) page views. Specifically, we utilize Google Analytics data from April 2009 – April 2012 and available Page Analytics (pageanalytics.extension.org/) in the personal finance or Financial Security for All (FSA) Community of Practice (CoP) areas. Top 25 articles and AaE with the highest page views per month will be selected to look for similar characteristics among these webpages. At the macro level, we will be exploring relevant statistics to our CoP such as search engine utilized, top search keywords, traffic sources, traffic referral, and mobile device access. We will be also be looking into the tendency of page hits associated with the following factors: newsletter, curriculum, number of words, topic (tag), average Google search entrances per week, age of the article, and its seasonal nature (month, quarter). We share result implications and limitations based on the results of this study

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The Family Caregiving, Families Food and Fitness, Just In Time Parenting, and other Human Science-oriented Communities of Practice have initiated an organizational transformation to deliver research-based information to America’s families. No longer working as distinct communities, these once-separate entities have formed a “Learning Network” that functions as a single administrative unit. The new structure offers a fresh paradigm for internal CoP operations, leverages shrinking resources, maximizes human capital, and advances opportunities for delivery of content and interactions with end-users. As eXtension’s optimization process was a catalyst for the formation of the Learning Network, foundational principles are representative of those set forth in the optimization plan. Crucial to the decision to undertake this strategic shift was a shared belief that a streamlined organizational composition would result in a regeneration of interest and commitment to the delivery of family-related resources and information across the nation. This session will include: 1) an outline of the rationale for undertaking this radical transformation, 2) the evolutionary process as it unfolded, 3) lessons learned to date, and 4) an engaged discussion regarding the possible applicability for other CoPs with complementary subject matter content.

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Social media adoption is critical to Cooperative Extension’s future but only to the degree that it helps us cultivate another critical understanding: our role platform architects and builders of the 21st century. We, as Extension educators, must learn the significance of platforms beyond their more widely understood role as the basis for additional web and software innovation. How well we learn to develop the most open, generative platforms – or, to put it another way, the most optimal learning environments – of the 21st century will determine our success or failure as an educational movement. These platforms will be measured by how effectively we empower our clients to share ideas and to work together collaboratively.