Posted on No Comments on Book Spotlight: Talk to the Elephant by Julie Dirksen — A Fresh Look at Behavior Change

Book Spotlight: Talk to the Elephant by Julie Dirksen — A Fresh Look at Behavior Change

book cover talk to the elephantSome of you have heard me talk before about Julie Dirksen, my favorite instructional design writer.  Her book – Design for How People Learn – is beautifuly written and illustrated and made great impression on me while I was working on a degree in instructional design. Her latest book is equally compelling for those of us who teach and try to help others to change behaviors.

If you’ve ever struggled to spark real behavior change—in yourself, your team, or your audience—Talk to the Elephant by Julie Dirksen is a must-read. Known for her practical and engaging writing on learning and design (Design for How People Learn), Dirksen takes us deeper into the world of behavior change and how we can make it stick.

The title refers to the well-known “Elephant and Rider” metaphor from psychologist Jonathan Haidt, where the Rider is our rational brain and the Elephant represents our emotional and instinctual self. Too often, we try to persuade the Rider, but forget that it’s the Elephant who actually decides which direction to go. Dirksen invites readers to “talk to the Elephant” by focusing on emotion, environment, social influence, and habits—all the things that truly drive human behavior.

This book is especially valuable for educators, designers, managers, public health professionals, and anyone in the business of helping others adopt new practices. Dirksen offers research-based guidance alongside real-world stories and actionable tools that help bridge the gap between intention and action.

Some standout insights include:

  • The limits of motivation: Why good intentions aren’t enough—and how to design for ease, not willpower.
  • The role of friction and environment: Small barriers can make or break a behavior change effort.
  • Why social norms matter: If everyone’s doing it (or not doing it), that changes everything.
  • The importance of feedback: Not just any feedback—timely, relevant, and actionable feedback.

Talk to the Elephant is not about forcing change but about designing conditions that invite it. With humor, clarity, and compassion, Dirksen helps us see why change is hard—and how to make it a little easier.

Recommended for:
Instructional designers, nonprofit leaders, Cooperative Extension educators, program developers, behavior change advocates, and lifelong learners looking to build smarter strategies for change.

Posted on No Comments on Member share: Explore NY’s Food System and Build Holistic Programs with the CCE Food Systems Curriculum

Member share: Explore NY’s Food System and Build Holistic Programs with the CCE Food Systems Curriculum

Hosted by Epsilon Sigma Phi | Presented by Laura Biasillo

Jun 24, 2025 01:00 PM Eastern Time | Zoom Recording

Join us for an engaging webinar that dives into the CCE Food Systems Curriculum, an innovative online resource created by Cornell Cooperative Extension Broome County in collaboration with subject matter experts from across the CCE system and Cornell Cooperative Extension Administration.

Presented by Laura Biasillo, Agricultural Economic Development Specialist and long-time food systems educator, this session will highlight how the ten-module curriculum helps educators and community partners better understand and support New York State’s dynamic food system. You’ll gain insights into key components such as:

  • What defines a food system
  • Relationship-building within the system
  • CCE’s evolving role in food systems work
  • Focus areas like workforce development, land access, and public health

This session will also spotlight the cohort-based model used to deliver the curriculum, providing a platform for shared learning, professional networking, and program development. Learn how you can join a future cohort and apply the curriculum to strengthen your local or regional programs.

Whether you’re new to food systems work or looking to deepen your approach, this webinar will equip you with practical tools and a broader perspective.

Meet the Presenter:
Laura Biasillo brings over two decades of experience in agricultural and food systems education, serving communities across New York through her work with CCE Broome County.

Posted on No Comments on Upping the Meeting Engagement: Getting Started with Poll Everywhere in CCE

Upping the Meeting Engagement: Getting Started with Poll Everywhere in CCE

If you’re looking to energize presentations, engage participants in real-time, or gather quick feedback from your audience, Poll Everywhere might be just the tool you need. Poll Everywhere is available to all Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) educators and staff through a Cornell enterprise license.

With Poll Everywhere, you can go beyond traditional hand-raising or static PowerPoint slides; this easy-to-use platform helps make meetings, trainings, and workshops more interactive and insightful. You can integrate live polls, quizzes, word clouds, crowdsource responses, and open-ended questions directly into your session—whether you’re presenting on Zoom, in Microsoft Teams, or in person. Participants can respond from their phones, tablets, or laptops using a QR code, link or by texting a code.

I’ve been using Poll Everywhere for over 12 years.  I’m quick to share that it has become easier to use and more reliable.  Here are a couple of examples from my experiences:

  • At a recent staff training I used a PowerPoint that had poll everywhere embedded into several of the slides to help staff engage in the topic (an anchoring exercise for those of you who follow my program development work), then we crowdsourced ideas to help shape the agenda (participants add their ideas and then vote up the ideas of others to better understand the interests of the audience), and then we did a closing exercise to set intentions (an aspiration setting activity).  I was able to show results to the audience, but also save the results in my Poll Everywhere account so that I can refer back to them later.  Wins all around.
  • Many moons ago, while working with the State 4-H Office, we incorporated dialogue prompts into different parts of the Career Ex agenda.  The volunteer teens and adults leading sessions asked their groups the questions and shared the QR code so that the students could provide feedback throughout the course of the event (and use their devices for the good of the whole :)).

Want to get started? CCE staff can request access through Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation https://teaching.cornell.edu/learning-technologies/assessment-tools/classroom-polling/poll-everywhere. If you already have a Poll Everywhere account, using your Cornell email, your license will automatically upgrade and preserve all your existing activities. Once logged in at polleverywhere.com, you’ll find a dashboard where you can create new polls, customize visual settings, and manage participants and reports.

Poll Everywhere is a strong alternative to other tools you may already use. It offers more robust features than Zoom polls and can effectively replace tools that we don’t have a license for, like Menti. For more complex surveys or detailed data analysis, Qualtrics may still be the better option—but for live engagement, Poll Everywhere strikes the right balance between simplicity and power.

If you’re interested in incorporating Poll Everywhere into your slide presentations, you can download the dedicated app for PowerPoint from the Poll Everywhere website. More details on this option can be found on the CCE Staff Bulletin page: https://staff.cce.cornell.edu/units/cce-staff-bulletins

Want to see it in action? There are tutorials, webinars, and guides available to help you get up to speed:

And of course, if you run into any trouble, help is just an email away: cce-orgdev@cornell.edu

So go ahead—request your license, explore your dashboard, and try building your first activity. Poll Everywhere makes it easier than ever to turn a passive audience into an active part of the conversation.