The National Association of Program and Staff Development Professionals recently hosted Dr. Theresa Ferrari, a colleague from Ohio State, to share tips on publishing Extension work.
Check out: Who, Me, An Author? Tips for Publishing Your Extension Work – recording now available
If this topic area is of interest or you have additional ideas for professional development for Extension Staff – let us know by completing our professional development survey.
Many of you are familiar with the Journal of Extension – it is a peer-reviewed resource with research and extension articles written about the practice of doing our work by colleagues in Land Grants. When I first started in Extension it would should up on my desk regularly and now it is of course online – searchable and at our fingertips all the time.
A quick search on “staff development” yielded today’s fun fact:
Onboarding & regular professional development aids in retention. Likely no surprise – but it might be helpful to know the research and writings about this topic. In this article about the value of staff development University of Florida colleagues share a review of research (great reference list) that points to the value of onboarding and staff development and they share a method that they developed for articulating the return on investment for staff development for their funders.
The article reminds us that:
So, what do you want professional development on? Last week we piloted a professional development survey at Ag In-service to answer the question – “What professional development do (program staff) need?, In what form? And how do we share information about opportunities? This staff survey is now open to all – take a few minutes to let us know: What professional development opportunities are you interested in? This short survey is anonymous…your candid responses are helpful.
Fun Fact: CCE program reporting data indicates that Extension staff reach more indirects via “tabling” at events than other means of indirect education
Tabling is an effective way to educate and engage potential audiences. I’m reviewing data right now and can see…we use tabling a lot, reaching potentially millions each year. While hard to evaluate the impact of such events, there are notable ways of making tabling activities more engaging for all (and fun for staff!). A little googling on “driving traffic to exhibitors” will give you a sense of how to grow your audience in this way. Below is a synopsis of ideas that you may find. What other ideas do you have to share? Let us know @cceorgdev
Many are familiar with Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability and authenticity. New York State 4-H Educators have been gobbling this up for the last year or two and sharing it with others via webinars and conference workshops. In Dare to Lead Brown takes us into our workplaces. This book helps us to be vulnerable at work and to lean into communication with our teams. Sometimes this communication can be receiving feedback that is challenging to hear. This work reminds us of the importance of challenging interactions and the growth that can happen if we open ourselves up to allow it. One piece I took away from the book is that clear is kind and unclear is unkind. If we are giving someone directions or feedback, we need to be as clear as possible. Sometimes it is difficult to give information in an honest, open, and direct way because we do not want to hurt people’s feeling or insult them. However, we are doing a disservice when we do not dig deep and share the truth as clearly as possible.
For those interested in aiming for behavioral change, there is a self-assessment. It visits the areas of Rumbling with Vulnerability, Living into Our Values, Braving Trust, and Learning to Rise. It would be a good tool to take as a pre and later as a post.
Susan Coyle is a 4-H Educator in Monroe County, and recipient of the 2018 ESP professional development scholarship.
I read Discovering Your True North, by Bill George, for a graduate course, High Performance Management. I am sure I would not have picked the book up off a shelf at the library and thought to read it on my free time. However, I really enjoyed the book and the information in it. Bill George is a former CEO of a large medical device company. While his frame for his workplace is much different than a Cooperative Extension Association, I found his writing relatable. I particularly appreciated the way that George keeps values at the center of work as well as his encouragement of mindfulness and affinity groups. The True North in the title is your values. He encourages discovering and understanding what your true north is and really sticking to honoring it in decisions and actions. It was also a great reminder that I need to continue to work on mindfulness and work-life balance. Lastly, he spoke of the importance of having a few trusted people that you can confide in.
This book comes with an online self-evaluation tool. It is recommended to take the assessment more than once as you journey to becoming an authentic leader. It cover five core areas and reflect if you are having success with change through self-awareness.
Susan Coyle is a 4-H Educator in Monroe County, and recipient of the 2018 ESP professional development scholarship.
Designing instruction and being a learner in an audience or class, working to learn new things, are flip sides of the same coin. Learning is the intended outcome – but achieving that goal can be tricky.
Were you ever a student or a participant in a class or a training (online or otherwise) that left you feeling too “full”, or confused? Or perhaps it left you reviewing the lesson 2, 3 or 4 times so that you could better understand what was presented? That feeling, referred to as cognitive overload, is real – your brain just can’t handle that much information.
Research indicates that using words and pictures together is an important strategy for providing instruction that promotes deep learning and a transfer of knowledge. Drs. Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer, in their book e-Learning and the science of instruction, describe e-learning multimedia as a combination of text and audio as well as still and motion visuals to communicate content.
These ideas, which may seem like just good common sense, are also grounded in science and research. They go on to describe a list of multimedia principles that are intended to help avoid cognitive overload and help learners more easily grasp complex issues. I’m going to be writing about those principles on our ESP blog and will feature the segmenting principle in this post.
The segmenting principle suggests that breaking a complex lesson down from one large lesson into smaller, more manageable segments can help a learner to more easily understand a lesson. Breaking a big idea down into smaller buckets of content is much like what we would do if we were preparing a course, module or presentation outline.
Clark and Mayer also suggest presenting the ideas one at a time, with a mental break in between to allow for the learner to digest the concept. More time with one concept equates to time for pushing ideas around in your working memory, giving you a chance to relate the concept to prior knowledge.
Can you think of a time when you have participated in an training or lesson set up this way?
Worth the effort? Why invest the time to carry out the segmenting principle? Poorly designed instruction wastes time and money. We want to help participants understand what they are being taught, learn new skills and grow in confidence. Research shows that the segmenting principle is a successful method to design instruction of complex issues.
Reflecting on the segmenting principle: How will you use these ideas to plan your next educational program?
This winter I read through Working Out Loud, by John Stepper. Working Out Loud is a book about helping to set and reach (personal and work) goals. I was introduced to the concepts in grad school and have been talking about it for a couple of years. I enjoyed reading it and sharing the ideas with others at work this year. The book encourages the reader to set an intention and then provides a process to work towards it.
An intention I’ve set for myself for this year is to get up at 5am each morning – so that I don’t feel so rushed to get out the door, but can slowly own the day. For me this is not easy – so following some of the Working Out Loud ideas for developing new habits has been helpful.
The book suggests reading what others write about the habit that you are trying to adopt, talk to people around you about what you are learning, call attention to not just what you are learning, but to those that you are learning from, and continuing the process. The idea of working out loud is critical to an outcome that my work unit (organizational development) values – building collegial mentoring relationships. As a result – we built the book into the working practice of the Program Development Leadership Cohort we created small groups to help staff to not just learn about working out loud, to actually do it. Cohort members seem appreciative of the process and the opportunity to share what they are learning.
In conclusion, this one gets two thumbs way up – a great read and a practice for success.
Epsilon Sigma Phi (ESP) is dedicated to fostering standards of excellence in the Extension System and developing the Extension profession and professional. This Lambda Chapter blog will allow our staff from across the state to share news, resources and professional development content with each other. We hope this becomes a portal where chapter members can keep in touch and learn.
