Category: Campus

The State of Nevada requires employees to take mandatory training courses upon employment and retake them every few years. The courses had to be completed using specific state computers or by attending in-person classes.

Much of Nevada is rural, and therefore it was difficult for rural county employees to complete the trainings. Seeing a need, Vicki Jones, a University of Nevada Cooperative Extension employee, wanted easier access for county employees. Jones worked with the Nevada Department of Personnel to get the department’s Moodle-based training courses duplicated on eXtension at http://campus.extension.org/.

Now all of Nevada’s Cooperative Extension employees as well as all employees of Nevada’s higher-education institutions have online access to the trainings.

Each of the state’s 10 institutions currently using these courses is provided a unique enrollment key. Nevada administrators can create reports for individual institutions. Each institution receives a quarterly report of those who have completed final exams for the various courses and received a certificate of completion.

Nevada has eight of these training courses on eXtension’s website. There have been more than 4,000 certificates issued since 2010.

Nevada’s organizational training courses are specifically for State of Nevada employees, but there are likely components of these courses that would apply to employees of almost any institution.

For information about how Moodle might contribute to your educational efforts, contact the eXtension Moodle help desk at moodlehelp@extension.org. You may also contact Chad Waters at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, watersc@unce.unr.edu, for additional information about the Nevada courses.

Idaho Extension educators are seeing a new generation of home canners who are inexperienced and may not be trained in safe home food preservation techniques. At the same time, only one in three Idaho Extension offices have an FCS educator who is knowledgeable in food safety and home food preservation techniques. Often one educator covers multiple counties with limited resources. Other states are experiencing similar changes.

In 2004 a team of University of Idaho Extension and campus faculty, led by Carol Hampton, Boundary County FCS educator, adapted the researched-based University of Idaho/Washington State University Food Safety Advisor Volunteer Handbook into a web-based course, Preserve @ Home. Since that first offering Hampton, Laura Sant and Joey Peutz, Idaho Extension educators, have partnered with Extension educators in Deschutes and Tillamook Counties in Oregon, Boulder County in Colorado and Washington State University Extension to educate more than 430 people in the U.S. and internationally. Local educators enhance the Preserve @ Home experience with a hands-on lab or instructors connect students to their local Extension office.

In 2012 the course was moved to campus.eXtension.org to take advantage of the technical support offered by eXtension’s Moodle instructional designers. The course was redesigned to make it more user friendly and increase student satisfaction.

The program goal is to reach and educate individuals on food safety and food preservation while limiting geographical barriers. Preserve @ Home’s six week program includes: lessons, National Center for Home Food Preservation’s So Easy to Preserve videos, weekly student discussion board and real-time chat, quizzes, final exam and evaluation survey to collect impact data.

Students are required to cite their quiz answer source which exposes them to a large number of research-based Extension publications and web sites. It is the philosophy of the instructors that it is more important to know where to find an answer than it is to think you know the answer and share incorrect or outdated information. On average 75 percent of students regularly participate in the discussion board and weekly chat. Many students stay in touch after the course and use instructors as continuing resources for questions or personal preserving successes.

Students have evaluated the course with comments including “Thank you for all the work you’ve put into this class. It’s been exactly what I’ve wanted since I started canning”; “I learned a lot and feel much more confident in knowing the correct way to preserve food.”; and “I have learned so much and really feel prepared to evaluate the safety of recipes and methods of home preservation in my own kitchen”.

One significant advantage to the eXtension online course is the ability of Extension educators from different counties or states to teach cooperatively. Instructors can access the classroom from any location with internet.

Preserve @ Home is a fee based course, but if you would like guest access to view it, would like to offer the course in your state or have questions, contact Carol Hampton at champton@uidaho.edu. For information about how Moodle might contribute to your educational efforts, contact the eXtension Moodle help desk at moodlehelp@extension.org.

The State of Nebraska requires parents who are divorcing, seeking custody modification or never married and seeking custody to take a class. In responding to the need for these classes, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension has provided training for 10,057 parents caring for approximately 18,102 children since 1999. For approximately the first 12 years, all training was conducted onsite. In January 2012 the Nebraska Supreme Court approved the use of online technologies for such training.

Seeing this as an opportunity, and knowing of some other online courses offered by Nebraska educators through campus.extension.org, Cynthia Strasheim and Maureen Burson, Nebraska Extension Educators, sought the help of eXtension to put the course online. With the further involvement by other Extension educators, as well as staff of Nebraska Educational Television, the Co-Parenting for Successful Kids course went live in late January 2012, reaching 869 parents in 2012. For comparison, their continued onsite training efforts reached 983 in 2012.

The online class using eXtension’s Moodle course management system includes video examples and instruction, interactive pages and chapter reviews. The distinguishing characteristic of the course, however, is the level of involvement by its teachers. Participants are required to complete a number of assignments, but because the submissions are qualitative in nature, Nebraska Extension Educators including Strasheim and Burson, as well as Mary Nelson and Deanna Vansickel, provide personalized responses and feedback to every submission. In those responses, they make extensive use of Extension research based resources such as those provided by the eXtension “Just In Time Parenting” community. When students complete the course, the University of Nebraska provides the participants with a certificate that is recognized and honored by Nebraska courts.

The participants have evaluated the course with comments including “The mix of journal entries, quizzes and videos made the information sink in” and “I was able to continue my normal day to day duties as a mom without trying to schedule a class somewhere with a busy schedule.” These comments point both to the value of the rich set of learning tools available at eXtension’s online campus, as well as its availability for anyone in the public to enroll and use the system at any time.

Co-Parenting for Successful Kids is a fee based course, but if you would like guest access to view it, or have other questions about it, contact Cynthia Strasheim at cstrasheim1@unl or Maureen Burson at mburson1@unl.edu.

For information about how Moodle might contribute to your own educational efforts, contact the eXtension Moodle help desk at moodlehelp@extension.org.

eXtension’s online course site, Campus, campus.extension.org, has been upgraded to Moodle, version 2.2.

This version of Moodle provides a number of enhanced features, including integration with external repositories, sharing of content among courses, activity completion criteria to guide the user through a course, and ability to exchange courses with Moodle sites throughout the world. Course developers can now directly pull files from services including YouTube, Flickr, Dropbox, Google Docs, Picasa, Box and Wikimedia for inclusion in the courses. And an enhanced linkage with the Kaltura video service now offers the ability to create online presentations–a combination of video and some other document such as a Powerpoint file–which enriches the total online experience.

The eXtension Moodle Help Desk staff continue to offer a series of webinars about this new version of Moodle. Check out the listings titled “Developing Online Learning Through Moodle 2” at learn.extension.org. Recordings are available for any session you miss. And, to take a simple tour through how Moodle 2 operates, check out the Moodle 201 course listed in the Organizational Training category at campus.extension.org.

Questions? Send an email to moodlehelp@extension.org.

eXtension’s online course site, campus.extension.org, is scheduled for upgrade to version 2.2 during Thanksgiving week. This version brings several new capabilities that we are excited about implementing. Some of the more significant relate to sharing resources. Course developers–called “teachers” in Moodle–can easily share files with other teachers. Moodle 2 comes with built-in plugins that allow teachers to import from or link to files in Dropbox, Box, Flickr, YouTube, Google Docs, Picasa, Wikimedia and other similar services. And, Moodle 2.2 allows teachers to share courses with teachers at other Moodle sites throughout the world through a “community hub.”

Another powerful feature of Moodle 2.2 allows teachers to establish a specific workflow within a course, with access to some activities being contingent on successful completion of other activities. And, this same feature allows a teacher to indicate specific criteria for what it means to “complete” a course.

Finally, to make the user experience more pleasing, Moodle 2.2 allows users to “dock” different parts of the course view (i.e., get them off the screen), enter comments on various activities, keep track of their progress through courses, and easily use mobile devices to engage in the courses.

For a glimpse, please check out campus.demo.extension.org to see a few courses explaining more about Moodle 2.2. If you have questions, send them to moodlehelp@extension.org.