Unlock the Power of Game-Based Learning with New Mexico State Learning Games Lab – Register Now for Our Exclusive Webinar

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Research highlights the efficacy of game-based learning in educating youth. A team at New Mexico State University’s Learning Games Lab is applying that research, using their expertise in game-based learning to make food safety education exciting for the next generation of food handlers and enthusiasts.

Youth prepare food for themselves and their families and may have careers in the food industry. It’s important that they learn about safe food handling, cooking, storage, and when food is unsafe. Cue Theme Park Kitchen, an interactive online learning game designed to captivate and educate youth about food safety practices. Players can engage in different themed kitchens to serve delicious and safe meals to customers. It’s a redesign of “Ninja Kitchen,” launched in 2011 to teach kids food handling skills. The game’s designers focused on improving the game’s cultural sensitivity, working with youth to create a more inclusive reboot. The team’s work was supported by the New Technologies for Ag Extension program.

Sign up to attend an upcoming webinar where team members will share strategies about using gamification in education. It’s slated for Wednesday January 31st from 12-1 p.m. EST.  This exciting one-hour event will explore how gameplay fosters behavior change, and how the Learning Games Lab created Theme Park Kitchen using inclusive design for learning. Team members will share ways that educators and Extension professionals can use the game in formal and informal educational settings. Participants will also have an opportunity to test the game for their own use.

To learn more about the project, read this feature story about the team’s work. You can also take a deeper dive into the project’s specifics by reading a publication written about by the team: Teaching Youth Food Safety: A Game-Based Experience, available in the Extension Foundation’s library.

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Extension Foundation Releases Three New Titles

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Three new titles are available on the Extension Foundation’s website. The brief publications – written as magazine-style feature stories – share project work funded through the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) program, a cooperative agreement between USDA NIFA, Oklahoma State University, and the Extension Foundation. NTAE’s goal is to incubate, accelerate, and expand promising work that will increase the impact of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in the communities it serves, and provide models that can be adopted or adapted by Extension teams across the nation. 

Each of the publications is excerpted from the New Technologies for Ag Extension 2022-2023 Yearbook, an 83-page magazine, which shares how these grant projects improve human, environmental, and community health. 

  • West Virginia University Extension – “My Hometown is Cool.” Educators at West Virginia University Extension have created a toolkit to teach youth how to be community developers and entrepreneurs. This publication provides a brief overview of how the program works and what the creators hope to accomplish with this exciting program.

 

  • West Virginia State University – “Out of the Mines.” This publication shares how an NTAE project team is focused on helping rural communities in West Virginia capitalize on historical and natural resources, to compensate for the dwindling coal-based economy. Extension professionals from West Virginia State University planned to pilot the concept in Kimball, West Virginia. In this story, you’ll learn why this effort is critical for southern West Virginia and what the team hopes to accomplish. 

 

  • University of Massachusetts, Amherst – “Capacity Building – Expanding Urban Extension.”  A University of Massachusetts Extension team plans to train up to 10 UMass Extension educators to engage more effectively with underserved and urban audiences in a wider range of communities in Springfield, Massachusetts, and across the state. The team will also partner with a variety of community organizations to develop resources and programs that use and build on the strengths of this broader target audience. This publication provides a brief overview of the program’s goals and strategies.

The Extension Foundation carries dozens of titles in its library. Four to five additional publications are slated to hit the shelf each week through the end of November. Sign up to receive publication notifications here. You can find the entire library of publications here.

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Extension Foundation Releases Four New NTAE Titles

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Four new titles are available on the Extension Foundation’s website. The brief publications – written as magazine-style feature stories – share project work funded through the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) program, a cooperative agreement between USDA NIFA, Oklahoma State University, and the Extension Foundation. The goal of NTAE is to incubate, accelerate, and expand promising work that will increase the impact of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in the communities it serves, and provide models that can be adopted or adapted by Extension teams across the nation. 

Each of the publications is excerpted from the New Technologies for Ag Extension 2022-2023 Yearbook, an 83-page magazine, which shares how these grant projects improve human, environmental, and community health. The Yearbook shares innovative Cooperative Extension work across the U.S., from technology to composting to youth development to health and equity. In addition, the publication shares information about the vital work undertaken by ECOP’s Program Action Teams.

  • University of Illinois – Community Seminar Series. The University of Illinois Extension launched the Community Seminar Series in 2020 and has been refining and expanding it ever since. A collaboration between U of I Extension and U of I’s Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI), the CSS is an effective way to educate the public on health topics and give students majoring in health fields a chance to build their expertise, through developing and presenting the seminars. This story provides a brief overview of the goals and strategies of this program.

 

  • University of California ANR – Community is Our Jam. Through virtual and in-person workshops, participants in the University of California Master Food Preserver program learn about reducing food waste and about safe food storage, preparation, and preservation methods. This feature describes how the team has focused on equity, broadening their program’s audience and impact and the lessons the team has learned while developing the program. 

 

  • Penn State University – Buy, Cook, Eat Local. While changing food habits isn’t easy, learning how to cook healthy food using farm fresh ingredients may help people improve their diets. An innovative program that Penn State Extension educators launched in spring 2023 is lowering barriers to healthy eating by introducing people to fresh produce and other local foods. This story describes how the program works and how the team collaborates in the community, specifically with farmer’s markets, to accomplish its goals.

 

  • The National Center for Home Food Preservation: Because We Can. Specialists in consumer and retail food safety from nine Southeastern land-grant universities launched the Food Safety Extension Network in 2021 to raise general awareness of the importance of preserving food safely and to be a resource for home cooks, small, independent food retailers, and home-based food preparation businesses. This piece gives an overview of how the Network was built and how it expects to operate. Participating institutions are: University of Arkansas, Clemson University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Tennessee, and Virginia Tech University.

The Extension Foundation carries dozens of titles in its library. Four to five additional publications are slated to hit the shelf each week through the end of November. Sign up to receive publication notifications here. You can find the entire library of publications here.

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Project Accelerator Leads to New Grant and Ongoing Partnership

Article by Stacey Stearns, University of Connecticut

A new USDA-NIFA funded project will develop cohorts of 4-H youth and create biotechnology video games. The games will convey fun and science-based information about biotechnology such as genetic engineering. They will also build public confidence in the safe use of biotechnology in agriculture and the food system. The project will also provide education to youth on career opportunities. The University of Connecticut (UConn) Extension, together with faculty members of other departments in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), is leading the project in partnership with the Learning Games Laboratory at New Mexico State University (NMSU).

Youth will take part in meetings and game jams with the UConn and NMSU teams. Curricula includes 4-H experiential lessons, industry field trips and speakers. The team will develop and share outreach materials including two interactive games and videos. NMSU’s role is developing the games with the 4-H youth, allowing them to understand the design and development process.

4-H members will build knowledge and career awareness through the program. They will also experience the 4-H fundamentals of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. These all align with a Whole Child approach through the 4-H Thrive Model. Evaluation will include the 4-H Common Measures validated instrument.

“Our project will propel innovative biotechnology and STEM career work in our 4-H youth development program to the next level. We will sustain project outcomes through ongoing support from our partners. This is a strategic growth area for the 4-H program and Extension,” says Jennifer Cushman, the principal investigator on the grant. Cushman is also the co-team leader for the UConn 4-H program.

This new grant project builds off the successful completion of a game prototype by the UConn and NMSU teams. In 2017, a group of extension educators and faculty members of CAHNR formed the UConn GMO Working Group. Members of the Group became part of the New Technologies in Agricultural Extension (NTAE) Year Two program. NTAE is a program of the Extension Foundation in partnership with Oklahoma State University. UConn’s team knew that food marketing labels create confusion for consumers. We shared an interest in helping consumers find science-based information.

We decided to create a game about food marketing labels and focus on the non-GMO, organic, and natural labels for our NTAE project. Our team identified 19 different food labels that cause consumer confusion. Our experience with games was as players and creating a game was a challenge. We reached out to the Learning Games Laboratory at New Mexico State University (NMSU) to create our game.

Both teams started working on the NTAE project. The UConn team created the game content while the NMSU team developed the game infrastructure. Our limited budget meant that we created a game prototype. Literature review showed that this was a promising educational outreach method for our audiences and we wanted to secure additional funding for more game-based learning projects.

UConn team members identified the Food and Agriculture Non-Formal Education (FANE) grant proposal as an area where we could expand. Game-based education is a fun and engaging way to share science-based information with our audiences. The team developed our proposal in collaboration with NMSU. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture at USDA selected us for funding in the fall of 2021. The project, Advancing 4-H Youth Careers in Food and Agriculture via Biotechnology and STEM, is active through 2025. The UConn 4-H team and NMSU will continue supporting the project when the grant concludes.

The NTAE program is a project accelerator meant to help teams quickly scale up newer projects. These positively impact Extension’s audiences and build innovation into programs. UConn team members worked with Chuck Hibberd and Scott Reed, our project catalysts. We also received support from the Extension Foundation’s key informant services. These included digital engagement, marketing, leadership development, partnerships, publishing, and professional development. Our recently funded project demonstrates the success of the NTAE model in helping teams accelerate projects and positively impact audiences.

The UConn team includes Joseph Bonelli, Jennifer Cushman, Sharon Gray, Robert Ricard, Stacey Stearns of Extension; Cristina Connolly of Agricultural and Resource Economics; Mike Puglisi of Nutritional Sciences, and Cindy Tian of Animal Science.

The NMSU team includes Adrian Aguirre, David Abraham, Matheus Cezarotto, Barbara Chamberlin, John “CC” Chamberlain, Anastasia Hames, Pamela Martinez, Philip McVann, and Amy Smith Muise. All are part of the Department of Innovative Media, Research, and Extension at NMSU.

Visit s.uconn.edu/unpeeled for more information on the NTAE project and s.uconn.edu/biotech for more information on the new project.

This work is supported by the Food and Agriculture Nonformal Education program, grant no. 2022-68018-36094 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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Utah State University HEART Team solidifies vision, reinforces project planning at Impact Collaborative Summit

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Taking action to help communities across Utah in response the opioid epidemic is a critical priority. The HEART Team’s focus on Harm Reduction Education is one important component of our response to the epidemic. The time this team spent with the Impact Collaborative allowed them to form a vision and strategy for their project, test their ideas, and get equipped with skills and tools that helped innovate a new project idea from the ground up with real potential for saving lives and increasing awareness of programs available to our communities across Utah. – Dr. Brian Higginbotham, Associate Vice President of Extension, Utah State University

The United States, including Utah, is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. As a state, Utah has consistently ranked in the top ten of deaths from opioid overdose. Although Utah has taken steps to respond to the opioid crisis, Substance Use Disorders (SUD) continue to impact many lives. The use of government programs to reduce opioid use has been met with questionable success due to the lack of focus on individual communities. One method of research that is not well-known to the general population and has shown to be effective is Harm Reduction programming. Harm Reduction is the idea that recognizes the challenges of completely stopping individuals from using substances, but provides services that will keep the user safer and healthier until the time comes that they may want to stop using a substance and seek assistance. 

The Health Extension: Advocacy Research Teaching (HEART Initiative) Team from Utah State University represents various communities across Utah in 9 counties. They have identified four pillars in the fight against the opioid crisis in their communities and across the state as (1) Harm Reduction, (2) Strengthening Community Ties, (3) Prevention and Education, and (4) Stigma Reduction. Additionally, the team has identified a major need to increase Harm Reduction Education in those communities. Looking to increase the awareness of communities across Utah, the HEART team is looking to create a video education series focused on Harm Reduction. 

The team members include Dr. Ashley Yaugher, Extension Assistant Professor, Health & Wellness; Timothy Keady, Extension Assistant Professor, Health & Wellness; Dr. Maren Voss, Extension Assistant Professor; Reshma Arrington, Extension Assistant Professor; Kandice Atisme, Extension Assistant Professor; and Dr. Mateja Savoie Roskos, Associate Professor of Nutrition Dietetics & Food Sciences. 

According to Keady, “our first year as an Extension team focused on opioids, we have found communities filled with anger, compassion, devastation, love, mistrust, stigma and bias, confusion, thankfulness, and shame towards opioids and those with Substance Use Disorder. Our Harm Reduction video series will begin to connect all of these emotions to professional staff and members of the community that really care and can help. For many in the healthcare field, treating SUD is a driving passion. Too many community members have suffered in silence due to the stigma of substance use. The videos will provide a conversation starter in the community.”

Joining the Impact Collaborative

The HEART Team first joined the Impact Collaborative in April 2019 at the Impact Collaborative Summit. The Impact Collaborative is a program that was created by eXtension to help Extension professionals find more innovative ways to generate a visible, measurable, local impact. It achieves this through offering professional development opportunities to Extension professionals both virtually and face-to-face, connecting Extension professionals with non-traditional partners for strategic support and new capacity, and equipping Extension professionals with new skills, tools, and resources to help increase innovation in their daily work. 

At the Impact Collaborative Summit, the team had the opportunity to work closely on their project with access to key resources assembled by eXtension. The team was provided a coach from the Impact Collaborative’s network of Innovation Facilitators, several Key Informants on staff with subject-matter-expertise in specialized areas, and the opportunity to work in our Innovation Labs with access to graphic recorders and concept-mapping experts. 

Team lead, Dr. Yaugher stated “We really enjoyed being at the Summit. Not only did it provide us focused and dedicated time as a team – but it allowed us to develop relationships with all of our team members to both unify and solidify our program. We found the Innovation Stations at the Summit to be particularly helpful, and we made it a point to attend each of them. We went from having a basic illustration of our idea at the visualization station to a much more detailed infographic. That really helped us solidify the main areas of our program in a way that’s easy to understand. The coaches, the visualization stations, the Key Informants – all of that, you don’t have access to everyday. Having that all in one place was very helpful.” 

At the Summit, the team also had the opportunity to leverage the Impact Collaborative’s Innovation Kit Workbook for help guiding their project development. The Innovation Skill-Building methodology helps Extension professionals build skills in innovation, create opportunities for ideation through a design-thinking and lean experimentation process, and create action plans for projects and programs ready for implementation. “We really enjoyed the Impact Collaborative Innovation Workbook and the Innovation Canvas, and found it particularly useful. Those resources ensured that we were all on the same page and moving in the same direction,” said Dr. Yaugher. 

The Summit included 26 teams across Extension representing 34 land-grant universities. An important aspect of the Impact Collaborative framework is co-creating solutions for community impact and the opportunity for teams to collaborate on a national scale to help better inform project and program planning. Dr. Yaugher shared that “the coolest thing about the Impact Collaborative is the environment with teams from across Extension coming together, and feeling that energy in the room with everybody working towards a final product – you can’t get that anywhere else. The opportunity to network and collaborate with other teams across the country, and seeing what other Extension professionals are doing in similar work is really unique. After the Summit, we’ve continued to connect and collaborate with other teams and individuals.”

The culminating event of the Impact Collaborative Summit was an opportunity for teams to present their projects and programs to a panel of Extension leaders and external partners at a “LaunchFest.” Teams participating in the LaunchFest not only gain valuable feedback from the panel and their peers across Extension, but teams that are most-ready to implement their projects and programs have the chance to secure an opportunity for funding. As a result of their presentation at the LaunchFest, the HEART  team received a pre-approved application for a $5000 grant funded by eXtension to move their project towards implementation. 

Moving Towards Implementation

The grant will allow the HEART team to plan the Harm Reduction Video Education Series where they will pursue additional funding through a separate grant in the fall, 2019. The team has contact with experienced members of the Utah State University Marketing Video Production Staff who will assist in producing and editing the proposed video series. Looking forward, the team is looking to strengthen partnerships with the Utah Department of Health (UDOH), UDOH Injury Prevention, and the UDOH Division of Substance and Mental Health around the consensus that Harm Reduction is an area of concern that needs to be strengthened. 

Want to learn more? Follow the HEART Team’s progress on their website: https://extension.usu.edu/heart/index

About the eXtension Foundation

The eXtension Foundation is a membership-based non-profit designed to be the engine fueling U.S. Cooperative Extension’s advancement in making a more visible and measurable impact in support of education outreach from land-grant universities/colleges located in every state and territory. eXtension provides an array of opportunities for Extension professionals that foster innovation creation, the adoption of innovations at member institutions, and increased impact of Extension programs.

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eXtension’s Impact Collaborative helps ‘Sustain the Sustainers’ for Multi-State Initiative, USDA-NIFA

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Sustainability is one of our strategic priorities. 200 participants representing 33 institutions alongside 10 community partners participated in the NSS + NEES event resulting in inspiring and motivating speakers, new knowledge gained among participants, and new connections developed across organizations. The Impact Collaborative Summits were unique opportunities for this team to engage more deeply in reaching new and more diverse audiences, strategic planning for cultivating new partnerships, and finding new and innovative avenues for increasing local impact. – Dr. Nick Place, Dean and Director for the University of Florida/IFAS Extension Service

Participation in eXtension’s Impact Collaborative Summit helped provide new strategies for planning, audience and partnership engagement, and program delivery for a multi-state team from the University of Florida, Florida A&M, Washington State University, and North Dakota State University. The team, National Sustainability Summit, is addressing complex sustainability issues across the nation. They achieve this through the National Sustainability Summit (NSS) and the National Extension Energy Summit (NEES). These events are in partnership with USDA-NIFA and other community partners. 

The NSS + NEES event was held in April 2019 and brought leading sustainability and energy educators and practitioners together to showcase land-grant university Extension and Research program successes, share challenges, and identify opportunities with expertise in sustainability and energy issues.

Becoming an Impact Collaborative Program Team

The National Sustainability team first joined eXtension’s Impact Collaborative in October 2018 for the first Impact Collaborative Summit. The Impact Collaborative Summit is an eXtension membership benefit where teams from across Extension come together to strengthen community engagement, engage partnerships, strengthen program planning, increase program innovation, and develop strategies to effectively engage new audiences. 

According to Dave Ripplinger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University and the state’s bioenergy and bioproducts economist, “the Impact Collaborative Summit we attended in October 2018 gave us the opportunity to think more strategically about what we were doing…the assistance that the Impact Collaborative provided us not only impacted the folks in attendance at our event in Tampa, but also back in our communities.”

As a result of their work at the October 2018 Impact Collaborative Summit and their participation in the PitchFest, a place for teams to present their projects and programs to a panel of leaders from Cooperative Extension and partners from external organizations, National Sustainability Summit received the Urgent Community Need Award. This award provided the National Sustainability team strategic coaching support from the eXtension partnership development team, and an all-expenses paid trip to the next Impact Collaborative Summit. 

Strategic coaching support with the team focused on strengthening goals and anticipated outcomes of the Summit; clarifying external partner benefits and opportunities for sponsorship; and, defining considerations for sustaining the Summit for the future, including staffing and co-creation opportunities with partners. 

Deepening Program Planning & Engagement

The team reconnected with the Impact Collaborative after the NSS + NEES event by participating in the April 2019 Impact Collaborative Summit. Jennison Kipp Searcy, Resource Economist with the University of Florida, shared that “the goal of us attending the April 2019 Impact Collaborative Summit was to make sure that the NSS + NEES event was not just a one-off event. We were looking to leverage the momentum we had from all the resources, energy, and thought that went into the NSS + NEES event, and start looking at how to extend that to new partners, existing partners, and work products that can translate into action.”

The backbone of the the April 2019 Impact Collaborative Summit was a framework focused on propelling community impact. Teams were asked to first take a look at their target audiences to inform their program or project development. In many cases, teams were able to identify new audiences to engage that they had not thought of before. “Because of the Impact Collaborative, we’re going to be more deliberate in engaging the 1890 and 1994 communities to increase our ability to reach a more diverse audience. It also made us think about engaging more strategically with potential long-term partners,” said Ripplinger. 

Creating Impactful Results at the Local Level

When asked about what he took from his Impact Collaborative experience that has been most impactful for this team, Ripplinger stated that “the Impact Collaborative was core to supporting both NSS and NEES, and allowed us to put the strategic ideas we were able to form into practice through writing grants, developing new partnerships, and ensuring our own sustainability going forward. The experts that eXtension has assembled to be at these events to inform our planning are phenomenal, and the Impact Collaborative is a top-flight program. Throughout the event, you get tidbits of information from many different individuals that say ‘try this’ or ‘have you thought about this?’ Many of those tidbits can be extremely impactful. I think that any program, particularly those in their early stage, need to get engaged with the Impact Collaborative and take advantage of the creative planning and strategic support they provide…Now that I’ve had a chance to revisit eXtension through the Impact Collaborative, I see how it is playing a critical role in the success of Extension nationally.”

Searcy’s take on her experience is that “the Impact Collaborative gives us a chance to explore our creative and artistic sides, and how to engage non-traditional partners. We can take what we learn here and extend it back to our communities. The Impact Collaborative is helping to sustain the sustainers.”

As a result of their work at the April 2019 Impact Collaborative Summit and their participation in the Impact Collaborative LaunchFest, this team received the top-score award for multi-state/national teams. This award provides them with a pre-approved $5000 grant. 

The $5000 grant from eXtension will assist the team in writing grants to support funding for their next conference, ensure representatives from 1890 and 1994 institutions can attend the next Impact Collaborative Summit in October 2019, and developing marketing materials for the 2021 NSS + NEES event. The National Sustainability Summit team is currently planning their next NSS + NEES event for 2021. 

About the eXtension Foundation

The eXtension Foundation is a membership-based non-profit designed to be the engine fueling U.S. Cooperative Extension’s advancement in making a more visible and measurable impact in support of education outreach from land-grant universities/colleges located in every state and territory. eXtension provides an array of opportunities for Extension professionals that foster innovation creation, the adoption of innovations at member institutions, and increased impact of Extension programs.

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Impact Collaborative Program Team, Wellness in Tough Times, responds to mental health needs for Farmers & Ranchers across Nebraska

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“Addressing mental health needs, particularly for rural Nebraskans, is one of our strategic priorities. We formed this team as part of a larger initiative to address this need. We also have a focus at UNL on increasing innovation and the opportunity to work with eXtension and the Impact Collaborative helps reinforce that focus. A number of Extension professionals from our institution have been involved with the Impact Collaborative, helping catalyze innovation across our system. The most recent Impact Collaborative Summit was a great opportunity for this new team to dive deep into their program planning, evaluate their partnership development strategy alongside the resources eXtension brought to the table, and return to UNL with a program ready to move forward to make a positive impact in our local communities.” – Chuck Hibberd, Dean and Director for Cooperative Extension at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Natural disasters in the Spring of 2019 such as flooding, coupled with economic conditions over the last several years, has severely impacted the lives of farmers and ranchers in Nebraska. 83 out of 93 counties were declared as disaster areas and over 500,000 acres and 3400 homes were damaged or condemned. While the attention about recovery efforts often focuses on saving farms, crop, and product, there is an urgent need to address the mental stress that farmers and ranchers face during critical times.

Wellness in Tough Times, a team of Extension professionals from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, is working towards implementing a program to address this critical need. Their project aims to help rural families create and maintain connections for mental wellness, help local communities through supporting farming and ranching families to address mental wellness, and identify meaningful and impactful ways to create communities of care to support mental wellness. 

The team’s individual backgrounds are diverse and includes Susan Harris-Broomfield, Extension Educator – Rural Health, Wellness, and Safety; Soni Cochran, Extension Associate; Robert Tigner, Agricultural Systems Economist; Brandy VanDeWalle, Extension Educator; and Michelle Krehbiel, Youth Development Specialist/Associate Professor. 

The team formed in early 2019 at the request of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Extension leadership. Rural mental health is one of the institution’s strategic priorities. 

Reinforcing Program Planning at the Impact Collaborative Summit

The team took advantage of the opportunity to attend eXtension’s Impact Collaborative Summit as a way of bringing together their ideas and creating a pathway forward for this critical program. The Impact Collaborative is a program that was created by eXtension to help Extension professionals find more innovative ways to generate a visible, measurable, local impact. It achieves this through offering professional development opportunities to Extension professionals both virtually and face-to-face, connecting Extension professionals with non-traditional partners for strategic support and new capacity, and equipping Extension professionals with new skills, tools, and resources to help increase innovation in their daily work. 

“Even before the disastrous blizzard and flooding issues in our state, we knew there was a need to help rural families create and maintain connections for mental wellness, reduce stigma related to mental wellness, and help communities in supporting farming/ranching families to address mental wellness.  Now, that issue is compounded by income and home losses around the state. We have and will have some depressed and distressed folks who need to know about available resources and coping skills,” says Harris-Broomfield, team leader for the Wellness in Tough Times team. 

At the Impact Collaborative Summit, the team had the opportunity to work closely on their project with access to key resources assembled by eXtension. The team was provided a coach from the Impact Collaborative’s network of Innovation Facilitators, an opportunity to access a graphic artist and a concept-mapping coach to help visualize, connect, and identify gaps in their project planning, and several Key Informants on staff with subject-matter-expertise in specialized areas.

“I love how it brought us together and made us think about this for three days. We had no distractions, only input and help from our coaches and from other teams,” said Harris-Broomfield.  

When asked about what specific activities from the Impact Collaborative Summit that were most helpful, Harris-Broomfield stated, “the visualization stations were very helpful; there were those of us on the teams who were able to see something different when we went through this process. It was great that the Impact Collaborative had that ability to cater to each of our minds,” said Harris-Broomfield.

During the Impact Collaborative Summit, the teams spent an evening sharing their programs and projects with other teams during a poster session. The purpose of this was for teams to gain more insights from the expertise in the room, and strengthen their project and program planning. 

“The poster session was really valuable, and was an opportunity to get input from other professionals that helped me formulate some different plans I could bring back to my team. We would also bring individuals over from other teams to talk to us about their experience, which helped improve our planning,” says Harris-Broomfield.  

The culminating event of the Impact Collaborative Summit was an opportunity for teams to present their projects and programs to a panel of Extension leaders and external partners at a “LaunchFest.” Teams participating in the LaunchFest not only gain valuable feedback from the panel and their peers across Extension, but teams that are most-ready to implement their projects and programs have the chance to secure an opportunity for funding. As a result of their presentation at the LaunchFest, the Wellness in Tough Times team received a pre-approved application for a $5000 grant funded by eXtension to move their project towards implementation. 

Taking The Program to the Next Level

The team is now moving forward to get their project off the ground. The team meets virtually once per month to discuss priorities and actions as necessary and reports monthly to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Rural Family Stress and Wellness work group, consisting of about 22 members including Extension employees and other partners across Nebraska. 

They are first performing an internal needs assessment with colleagues, then assessing the needs in each community, using a variety of techniques to ensure maximum reach. This includes focus groups to find appropriate partners in each community, visits at well-attended rural events, and finding local champions to start the conversation of mental health.  Following that will be educating Extension staff and activating a powerful wellness campaign. Their partners will include all University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Educators and staff, various members of the established work group hosted by Nebraska Extension, and members from mental health positions around the state. Also partnering is the University of Nebraska Medical Center, UNMC, Behavioral Health Education Center of Nebraska, local media, Women In Agriculture organizers, Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, and AgrAbility. The team plans to pursue other potential partnership opportunities. 

The $5000 grant from eXtension will help fund travel for face-to-face meetings and focus groups, hire a data gathering system, and fund an interactive/educational booth activity to be used at farm-related events throughout the state such as Husker Harvest Days and the Nebraska State Fair in August and September.

Reflecting upon her experience with the Impact Collaborative, Harris-Broomfield shared that “it was inspiring and helpful. It’s something that I don’t think we would have ever accomplished on our own as just five people sitting in a room; we would have had a different outcome. I feel that the Impact Collaborative has the right experience in this, and it’s obvious that they’ve led teams through this before.”

About the eXtension Foundation

The eXtension Foundation is a membership-based non-profit designed to be the engine fueling U.S. Cooperative Extension’s advancement in making a more visible and measurable impact in support of education outreach from land-grant universities/colleges located in every state and territory. eXtension provides an array of opportunities for Extension professionals that foster innovation creation, the adoption of innovations at member institutions, and increased impact of Extension programs.

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Extension professionals adopt story mapping technology through the Impact Collaborative

This story was written by ChaNae Bradley, Senior Communications Specialist  at Fort Valley State University.

Shane Bradt, water quality and geospatial technology specialist for the University of New Hampshire, is helping Cooperative Extension professionals across the country share powerful messages about their outreach. It all began with his role as a key informant for the IMPACT Collaborative (IC).

The IC training is a day-and-a-half process that includes four steps. The steps include design thinking, key informant expertise, growing base of evidence-based practice and dynamic synergy. Each step comes with objectives that serve to change the way the teams work. After completing the process, the teams leave with a new plan allowing them to work more effectively.

Serving as a key informant for the IC four times, Bradt’s face-to-face trainings and webinars about story mapping, have provided a way for Extension professionals to share their stories in a dynamic fashion.  By incorporating information such as map data, videos or images, users are able to create interactive online websites.

“Most people in Extension have no web coding experience. This technology does not use coding or require the use of GIS or programming skills,” Bradt said, describing the use and mechanics of the technology he teaches to Extension professionals.

Because of his presentations at the IC, many attendees have developed Esri Story Maps, helping to spread the work of Extension beyond the local level.

“I think it changes the way you work because it provides a fairly easy way for an Extension educator to be able to use an online means to share information,” Bradt said.

As a result of his work with the IC, Bradt is requested across the country to conduct face-to-face trainings at land-grant universities and to present webinars for individuals who cannot attend a face-to-face training.

Jennifer Volk, an environmental quality Extension specialist for the University of Delaware, said she met Bradt at the IC and was intrigued by the Story Map he presented.

“That process was really good for me.  I was able to see other teams that were working on similar topics and taking similar approaches,” Volk said.  Reflecting on her experience, Volk said she began to think about how to implement some of the story mapping concepts Bradt presented.

“I saw a good connection between what he shared and a project I had in mind,” Volk said. The project she had in mind is called, “As If You Were There.”

This project brings together members of the Northeast Climate Hub and members of Cooperative Extension. Collectively the group is working to develop a 360 degree tour of different agriculture and forestry sites that are implementing climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.

“We wanted to use a Story Map to tie together 20 individual tools,” Volk said.

The project leader said the goal is to allow the Story Map to be the starting point where users can use a map and tour sites within the Northeast region. Currently in the beginning stages, Volk said she hopes the creation of this Story Map can provide an opportunity to use tools that are interactive and more effective than traditional tools such as fact sheets and standalone web pages.

In addition, Casey Hancock, community and economic development program coordinator for the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, began using story maps after participating in a weeklong GIS training taught by Bradt.

Through funding from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, UNH Cooperative Extension and three other states received training from West Virginia University to learn how to implement the First Impressions program. First Impressions is an assessment program that helps communities learn about their assets and opportunities for improvement.

First Impressions allows community volunteers to conduct assessments of cities and towns in a secret shopper format. Once the assessment is completed, a report is provided to the community, which details the community’s strengths and opportunities for improvement around topics such as businesses, displays and signage, community vibrancy, and pedestrian safety.

“We knew when we brought the First Impressions program to New Hampshire we wanted to use mobile data collection,” Hancock said. “When we tried the program out, we discovered that it was hard to collect information secretly in the community with a paper booklet,” Hancock said.  

After taking one of Bradt’s courses, Hancock determined that a story map would help visually and spatially represent the assessments taking place by incorporating brief descriptions and photos of community volunteers’ observations. “The mobile data collection is the first step, then we qualitatively analyze the data to write a report. The story map supplements the report and provides the community with an interactive way to view data from the assessment,” Hancock said. An example of this work can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2rjFCyk.

Bradt, who continues to teach webinars and face-to-face trainings, said the biggest impact and most satisfying part of the training is allowing people in Cooperative Extension to think and explore the potential uses of Story Maps.

“They might use them to be more effective and at the same time, spread the awareness of this technology. I always enjoy teaching people about Story Maps, but the idea that Extension is using this to better do their jobs and accomplish more and inspire others is much more powerful,” Bradt said.

To see examples of story maps created to show outreach, visit https://bit.ly/2rlwFVf

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