on the Web
Session 1 - Welcome to the NDSU Extension Service
Session 2 - Who We Are and What We Do
Session 3 - Policies and Procedures
Session 4 - Information Technology
Session 6 - The Land-Grant University
Session 7 - Program Development and Educational
Design
Session 8 - Evaluation
Session 9 - 4-H Youth Development
Session 10 - Personalizing Your Programs
Session 11 - Professional Development
Session 12 - Working with Differences
Session 13 - Balancing Work and Personal Life
Session 14 - Organizational Management
Session 15 - Volunteer Management
Contacts
If there’s anything that can be done to make your first year with the NDSU
Extension Service better, please contact your supervisor (district director,
assistant director or department chair) or Deb Gebeke, Assistant Director, Staff Development.
debra.gebeke@ndsu.edu
Let's go back to the two key questions in program development and educational design:
- Who is your target audience?
- What is your goal or objective?
As a new staff member, one of your first responsibilities is to get to know your target audiences and their needs for educational programming. Cooperation with other organizations and agencies will expand your resources to develop and deliver programs for these audiences.
All staff members must face the challenge of asking whether they are conducting programs they like to do, or programs that are identified as meeting critical needs of the community.
It will be important to keep an open mind as you begin. And a good place to start is to know your audience.
Audience Demographics
Today it's easier than ever to gather demographic information about your audiences. Visit these Web sites to find statistics about your target audiences:
North Dakota State Data Center (www.ndsu.edu/sdc/) - includes on-line information about population, economics, housing, agriculture, Kids Count data, GIS availability, well-being indicators and much more.
North Dakota Agricultural Statistics Service (www.nass.usda.gov/nd/) - features ag at-a-glance information, crop weather, county estimates and more.
State of North Dakota (discovernd.com) - links to data from state agencies on business and finance, labor statistics, education, health and safety, and other topics.
A valuable resource that you should have in your office is the "State of North Dakota: Economic, Demographic, Public Services, and Fiscal Conditions" by Coon & Leistritz: NDSU Dept. of Agribusiness and Applied Economics. Click here to obtain county data.
It's essential to know your audience to best target your educational programs. Informal questioning is great in addition to statistics, but don't rely too much on hunches.
Cooperation and Collaboration
The five levels of connections are networking, cooperation, coordination, coalition and collaboration.
- Networking is dialog and common understanding.
- Cooperation is to provide coordination and limit duplication of services.
- Coordination is sharing resources to address common issues.
- Coalition is all members involved in decision making, roles and time defined and it links formal with written agreement.
- Collaboration is to accomplish a shared vision and consensus used in shared decision making.
On some programs, you may network with other agencies and organizations simply to reach the target audience to deliver your program. But other programs may truly be collaborative efforts where several groups develop and deliver a program together. Of course, it's important for Extension to market its programs, but this can still be done when Extension is cooperating with others on important projects.
Get Involved
Start a list of various agencies and organizations you may cooperate with to develop and carry out educational programming. Examples of common partners for Extension programming are: Weed Boards, Social Services, FSA, FFA, Crop Improvement Associations, Schools and Child Care Providers. You might want to keep this list on your computer, printing it out occasionally since you'll probably be adding to it often as you meet more people in your community or in your subject matter area. Personalize the list to fit your job responsibilities.
Next Session
Professional Development.