The scene above is an example of “satoyama”, a traditional Japanese agricultural landscape where different land uses are maintained in an integrated and harmonious manner over many generations. More broadly it is also what some call a Socio-Ecological Production Landscape (SEPL), supporting both human well-being and biodiversity through sustainable production systems. The Community Development and Knowledge Management for the Satoyama Initiative (COMDEKS) helps sustain and promote SEPLs across the globe by collecting and distributing knowledge and experience from successful on-the-ground practices for replication and upscaling in other parts of the world.
Though perhaps in a less idealized way, I and many of my Community, Local and Regional Food Systems CoP cohorts seek similar outcomes in the form of healthy, multi-functional1food systems adapted to local need and conditions, including urban environments. Of course as a Community of Practice knowledge sharing is also of great interest to us. In this post I highlight several findings from my recent eXtension supported Land Grant Informatics fellowship2 relevant to realizing these kinds of outcomes by more effectively linking people, technology and information in support of our Land Grant mission and the diverse communities we serve.
“Emergent Health” as an Integrative Framework for Collaborative Action
One thing I sought out early in my investigations were broad systems models/definitions of health and fitness, touched on in my last post. And from that, what opportunities might exist for “convening an ecosystem”3 of Land Grant actors around a shared set of informatics related objectives supporting those models in the form of healthy people, communities and food systems.
As it turns out, there is in fact a fair amount of existing momentum to build on, including that documented by the:
APLU Healthy Food Systems, Healthy People initiative, calling for “collaborations and integration among agriculture, food, nutrition, and health care systems that have never before been explored or optimized. Working across these systems and developing solutions that combine multidisciplinary research and education”. The image below from that report illustrates those kinds of collaboration across various scales.
Figure 1 (from APLU Healthy Food Systems, Healthy People report) Integration must occur at many societal levels, including national, state/regional, community/local, and scientist/educator/practitioner.
health as an ‘emergent property’ that results from different interactions among components of a complex, adaptive system. Together the individual determinants of health4, and the system as a whole – including social and environmental determinants – can develop a high degree of adaptive capacity, resulting in resilience and the ability to address ongoing and new challenges… To achieve and maintain health over long periods, individuals must continually readjust how they… respond…to the changing demands of life… Social action also is required to create circumstances that can promote individual and population health.5
This emergent, adaptive view of health echoes that of many others, including those I’ve quoted earlier in this series. It suggests a shift away from top down, one-size-fits-all prescriptive approaches often focused on treating the symptoms of dis-ease toward more facilitative ones (e.g. building soil health as a foundation for healthy food systems). A complex adaptive systems approach would also require the arrows in the diagram above going in both directions, allowing knowledge and insight to flow “up” and down, as well as laterally (e.g between communities).
I document in my report2 similar efforts/voices across various disciplines and sectors, some aimed squarely at tackling wicked problems like food insecurity and climate change. Many highlight the critical role networks and “boundary spanners” like Cooperative Extension professionals can play in supporting connectivity and feedback, one “circumstance” vital to the health of these systems, including sustainable agricultural systems. They do that partly by enhancing the ability of people, organizations and communities to recognize and leverage multiple forms of capital. That includes data, information and knowledge resources supporting ongoing learning and innovation locally, and collective intelligence on a larger, sometimes global scale.
Yet in spite of the many good reasons and calls for greater collaboration and integration, doing so remains a wicked challenge in itself, a task often at odds with our well-intentioned but increasingly outdated institutional, programmatic and funding structures. The good news is that a number of useful but underutilized tools and strategies already exist. What remains is for Land Grant actors (including Cooperative Extension and libraries like my own) to more systematically and collaboratively link and leverage these in support of network-centric approaches…
Networked Platforms and Stacks Supporting Emergent Learning
As I began to outline in my previous post, this transformation will require new “socio-technical” structures and capabilities. That means systems (including agrifood systems and Land Grant knowledge systems) where social and technical subsystems are optimized to support locally-directed, globally-connected problem solving and innovation, as well as the well-being of those (including Cooperative Extension) engaging with those systems.
In that post I also mention several architectural patterns commonly found in innovative environments, including networks, stacks and “emergent platforms”. If we look at health as an emergent property relying on these, then a systems approach would require the co-creation and maintenance of such structures. Though now retired Jim Langcuster from Alabama Cooperative Extension has written at length about the future of Cooperative Extension depending on its ability to embrace this type of work, transforming itself into an emergent, generative, “open source platform” developing “adaptive digital networks… responsive to the needs of contemporary learners”.
One central recommendation in my report is the collaborative development of a particular kind of knowledge commons, a “Land Grant Knowledge Graph” undergirding and/or linking such adaptive learning networks and platforms. Like the underlying (light gray) one on the far right below, potentially supporting a variety of emergent, health enhancing efforts.
“Graph” knowledge structures including graph databases provide an ideal matrix for supporting these environments of connectivity, enabling the modeling of a variety of topics or entities, and the relations between them. They offer many practical applications including support for serendipitous discovery and linking of widely distributed expertise and knowledge artifacts, as illustrated through various research networking tools like VIVO and derivatives such as AgriProfiles. In my report I also outline how Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) can be used to help document and map as a graph conversations amongst diverse stakeholders working to address wicked problems, through facilitated approaches like dialogue mapping.
Figure 3. “Google Knowledge Graph Card”, returned as part of a Google search result for “Liberty Hyde Bailey”
One of the more developed and commonly used examples of a knowledge graph is Google’s. Figure 3 shows one benefit provided by that graph, the ability to aggregate a wide variety of information resources related to a particular subject in the form of a “Knowledge Graph Card”. In my report I frame this as part of a larger evolution toward a “semantic web”, the original vision Tim Berners-Lee had of the World Wide Web , “where anything could be potentially connected with anything else”, offering countless opportunities/pathways for the sharing, discovery and (re)use of knowledge.
Recommendations
Realizing a Land Grant Knowledge Graph, more effectively linking the diverse and widely disparate knowledge resources from our various institutions in support of emergent learning and health might seem at first to be an impossible undertaking. Especially if approached from a traditional top down planning approach. In his piece Government as Platform, technology thought leader Tim O’Reilly flips that model, suggesting6 a more emergent, collaborative approach, by developing data and information layers, “on which we, the people, can build additional applications” –a suggestion worth considering for Land Grant Universities, sometimes referred to as the People’s Colleges. The Obama administration embraced such a role through its Digital Government initiative, outlining three layers of digital services within a digital ecosystem:
Information (or Storage) Layer -Includes structured information/data such as census data, plus unstructured information such as fact sheets and recommendations.
Platform (or Management) Layer -Includes all the systems and processes used to manage this information.
Presentation Layer –What the “end users” of information create/need in order to leverage that data and information in support of informed decision making and action.
Adapting this brilliant XPLANE created image from Jay Cross’ Informal Learning Blog (now archival due to his unfortunate passing), I’ve created the animation below to illustrate how Land Grant supported networked stacks and platforms might help facilitate emergent learning and innovation at the community level. Each able to both “push” and “pull” from those above, below and adjacent to it, enabling multiple pathways for data, information and knowledge exchanges. Combined with efforts like those highlighted in a recent GODAN Open Farms documentary this could greatly contribute to the development and scaling of SEPLs and similar integrated approaches.
My report2 provides several examples of existing organizations and initiatives illustrating typical roles or needs within this stack. It also provides several suggestions on how Extension and others can develop their “sociotechnical capabilities” for interacting with and contributing to such an ecosystem. That includes best practices like following FAIR principles, what I see as a specialized form of Working Out Loud, where you make the “digital trace” left by your work more findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
Gaining and promoting a systems-oriented definition of health, including agrifood systems health, based on an understanding of complex adaptive systems and related emerging transdisciplinary frameworks.
Ashared understanding of and ability to effectively leverage information and communications tools and systems (including Issue-Based Information Systems capabilities and metaliteracy)
Promoting trust and mutual understanding amongst Land Grant personnel and those they work with, nurtured through facilitative/network/systems leadership.
Next Steps
I and several colleagues have already begun exploring how some of these ideas could be implemented in the form of Land Grant system facilitated Crucial Conversations on Health and Wealth. Though we might each use different tools and programmatic structures to realize desired outcomes, we share an interest in collective sensemaking and problem solving approaches which can help communities better address wicked problems like hunger. At the very end of my report is a concept map generated from a recent Diversity & Inclusion designathon session exploring those ideas. Look for future posts/updates as we proceed on that learning journey!
Links to all the various outputs associated with the eXtension co-sponsored fellowship this post emerged from are available here: https://www.extension.org/jeff-piestrak/
Endnotes
1. Food systems “multifunctionality”, those providing economic, environmental and social functions or benefits simultaneously, is something many researchers and practitioners look at when assessing the health of food systems, particularly those applying a social-ecological systems (SES) framework. 2. My fellowship final report is available for download from Cornell’s eCommons repository here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/48205 3. In line with eXtension/LG system partner GODAN’s (Global Open Data for Ag & Nutrition) theory of change for realizing a data ecosystem for agriculture and food 4. A broad range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors can influence the health of people, communities and food systems. More information can be found here: https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/foundation-health-measures/Determinants-of-Health 5. Bircher, J., & Kuruvilla, S. (2014). Defining health by addressing individual, social, and environmental determinants: New opportunities for health care and public health. Journal of Public Health Policy, 35(3), 363–386. https://doi.org/10.1057/jphp.2014.19 6. O’Reilly’s article is chapter two from the book Open government: collaboration, transparency, and participation in practice
Andaman Islands coral reef. Photograph by Ritiks, distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0 license @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Coral_Reef_at_the_Andaman_Islands.jpg
Emergent by Design: Solutions Creating More Solutions
Over several previous posts1 I’ve written about why Cooperative Extension and the Land Grant system as a whole might (and in some cases already has begun to) embrace a more network-centric approach, enabling it to better facilitate the co-creation of knowledge and solutions which are both locally-grounded and research-informed. As well as helping it become more of a “system which learns”, continually adapting its fit to a changing world with greater responsiveness to issues like equity, inclusion and sustainability. Implying that:
A network-centric organization is both a sensible response to a complex environment and an enactor of sensibility on that environment.2
I explore these themes further here within the broader context of systems oriented approaches to complex problems, and the role “socio-technical systems” and platforms can play in supporting such capabilities. I also touch on the implications this has for institutions and programs seeking to support healthy, resilient people, communities and food systems.
Approaching Wicked Problems through a Complexity Lens
The term wicked problem, a complex problem for which there is no simple solution, or even agreement on what the problem really is, was first popularized in a 1973 article Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning4 by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber. In it they differentiate between “tame”, solvable problems and those with many complex interdependencies and changing requirements, with the latter requiring a much different approach than has been taken in the past. They state:
The classical paradigm of science and engineering -the paradigm that has underlain modern professionalism -is not applicable to the problems of open societal systems, problems inherently wicked.
Originally presented from the perspective of social policy planning the term has since been used to describe a host of modern challenges. That includes many Cooperative Extension and the Land Grant system as a whole are concerned with such as the “triple burden of malnutrition” (overnutrition, undernutrition or micronutrient deficiencies), invasive species and pest outbreaks, growing wealth disparities and climate change.
Addressing the root causes and not just the symptoms of such issues requires an understanding of the complex systems from which they arise. Several transformative areas of scientific inquiry (illustrated below) arising over the last several decades are helping shed light on these.
A history of complexity science, by Brian Castellani. Click to enlarge. Distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0 license @ Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Complexity_Map.svg
Drawing from, informing and linking several disciplines (including network science) this work is helping reveal and model the dynamic structures and relationships of a variety of different complex systems, such as cities, ecosystems, networks of neurons, social networks, power grids, and the internet. It’s been found these can give rise to “emergent” behaviors or intelligent structures (like bird swarms and termite mounds) not easily explained or predicted when looking solely at the aggregate abilities of their constituent elements, which might be quite limited at the individual level. Essentially systems where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Complexity science is also concerned with how those systems interact with their larger environment (often as nested, linked or overlapping systems of systems). Insights are now leading to the development of human designed systems like “robot swarms” exhibiting emergent behavior or “swarm intelligence” mimicking that found in the natural world.
Complex Adaptive Systems
Research in these areas has led to the recognition of complex adaptive systems (CAS), collections of entities or “agents” whose patterns of interaction over time can feed back on the system in a way which informs future interactions. That includes emergent responses to a changing environment which can increase survivability of the macro-structure, as well as the self-organizing processes which give rise to such responses. Because these processes are distributed and spontaneous, the system is typically better able to survive or self-repair than one dependent on top down or external control/resources.
Most relevant to my investigations1, the study of complex systems is also revealing reoccurring patterns in what could be called healthy or “fit” systems, including agrifood systems. These can exhibit the ability to 1) maintain functionality without fundamental changes (robustness), 2) recover or bounce back to a previous state (resilience), or 3) change (adapt) in the face of challenges, with examples found in a variety of social, ecological and technological situations. Systems able to maintain a balance of factors contributing to both resilience and efficiency, optimized for health and sustainability are said to exist within a “Window of Vitality”.
Land Grant Applications
So how might we consciously apply these principles to Land Grant institutions and programs? What are we to do when we realize that more often than not, the systems which we depend on and support are doing exactly what they were “designed” to do (intentionally or by default), sometimes at the expense of overall goals related to public health and well-being (possibly even while realizing individual programmatic outcomes)?
A 2014 book by Patricia Auspos and Mark Cabaj from the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change, Complexity and Community Change: Managing Adaptively to Improve Effectiveness5, applies complexity science to the world of place-based community change efforts. Building on the work of Bill Traynor (mentioned in my last post, in regards to creating environments of connectivity), and others, it states:
A complexity perspective emphasizes the interrelated and systemic nature of issues…responses to the underlying issues may be less fragmented, more strategic, and more sustainable if they are linked and integrated across programs, organizations, systems, sectors, and areas of activity… The potential to generate cross-domain effects helps to bring stakeholders together around a common vision.
They argue that community change actors experience complexity in two ways: by addressing complex problems and by working within complex adaptive systems. Their efforts can be improved by looking at problems (the book uses food deserts as one example) through the lens of complexity and employing adaptive leadership and management approaches (also mentioned in my last post).
Political scientist Jenna Bednar uses a complex adaptive systems lens in exploring What Makes Some Institutions More Adaptable and Resilient to Changes in Their Environment than Others?6. In that publication she outlines several internal and external barriers to institutional change, even as the context in which they operate changes. She describes three design characteristics, diversity, modularity, and redundancy which can contribute to institutional fitness. Elsewhere7, Bednar and Scott Page argue that the collective intelligence of a community depends on network structures linking diverse perspectives, and that those structures may depend on institutional ensembles.
Federal systems are presented by Bednar as being particularly robust. Such distributed structures offer systems level fitness advantages not found at the institution level, through phenomenon such as institutional complementarity, subsidiarity and “spillover”. This presents a compelling opportunity (and perhaps obligation) for embracing a CAS approach within our Land Grant system, something eXtension and federated bodies such as APLU, ECOP, AgNIC and USAIN are well positioned to champion and facilitate in coordination with federal agencies like the USDA.
Donella Meadows, co-author of the groundbreaking 1972 book The Limits to Growth, pioneered the application of complex systems analysis toward sustainability challenges. In the paper Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System8 she outlined a series of specific system properties which could be targeted to proactively change a system (or even transform it entirely).
Meadows arranged these “leverage points” along a continuum from those most easily altered but with relatively weak impacts (left end of lever above) to those more challenging to alter but extremely influential (right end above). These represented what she called “places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything”, a nonlinear trait of complex systems. Interestingly and still relevant today, Meadows first iteration of these levers came to her while attending a high-level meeting about globalization. Though well-intentioned she grew increasingly concerned about its focus on enhancing corporate growth without adequate attention to control mechanisms. Here and elsewhere Meadows reminded us that in many cases it is not technical solutions but our own mindsets which are holding us back from real (and often counterintuitive) solutions to wicked problems like hunger, with actions taken potentially worsening the very issues we seek to resolve…
People are not hungry in this rich country because there is too little food or money or organization. They are hungry because food, money, and organizations are not used for the purpose of once-and-for-all ending hunger. What is lacking is public commitment, or as some call it, political will.
In terms of my own work within the Cornell University library system, with Cooperative Extension, and beyond, I’m particularly interested in how increasingly sophisticated information tools and systems can better effect positive social change through lever number 7, The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information), and the affect that might have on the other levers.
Socio-Technical Systems Supporting Collective Intelligence
To support community and political decision-making, and the social “argumentative process” viewed as critical for better understanding wicked problems [and I would contend self-organized, emergent solutions], Horst Rittel and colleague Werner Kunz introduced the concept of Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) in their paper Issues as Elements of Information Systems9. It states:
IBIS guides the identification, structuring, and settling of issues raised by problem-solving groups, and provides information pertinent to the discourse. It is linked to conventional documentation systems but also activates other sources. Elements of the system are topics, issues, questions of fact, positions, arguments, and model problems.
Though IBIS was introduced before the arrival of modern computing systems, use of these was definitely anticipated. A variety of computer assisted or web based tools supporting this kind of sense-making through argumentation process have indeed been developed by others since then (see this blog post for a great overview: From information to knowledge: the what and whence of issue based information systems). I’ll be exploring potential Cooperative Extension applications with other colleagues at the upcoming eXtension Diversity & Inclusion Issue Corps designathon next month in Cincinnati, looking at how structured approaches like this, “designed for conversation”, might support civil discourse around health, wealth and shared prosperity, leading to collaborative solutions to issues like hunger.
This approach of bringing people, technology and information together in support emergent solutions is closely related to the concept of sociotechnical systems. The term was publicly introduced by Eric Trist and Ken Bamforth based on action research work with workers in English coal mines10. A key focus is on “joint optimization”, where both social and technical subsystems are optimized to promote organizational performance AND worker well-being.
Similar to what has happened with IBIS, since that time the concept of sociotechnical systems and their applications has continued to evolve and dovetail with other fields like complexity science. In their paper Solving Wicked Social Problems with Socio-computational Systems11, Joshua Introne and his colleagues describe one such effort, Climate CoLab,
representative of a general approach to melding human intelligence and social technology to solve wicked social problems. It is a sociotechnical system writ large, that leverages not only the intelligence of thousands of community members, but also the knowledge and capabilities of many pre-existing human systems. The platform itself is merely a nexus in which we hope our vast potential collective intelligence may be applied to solve the problem of climate change.
Work like this on “collective intelligence” platforms and systems draws from many of the same insights and biological models informing complexity science more broadly. For example a key mechanism supporting self-organization and the spontaneous emergence of complex, intelligent structures or behaviors without the need for central planning, control or even direct communication between agents is called stimergy. “Trace” left in the environment informs subsequent actions by the same and other agents which reinforce and build on each other. One example is the pheromone-marked trace ants leave, supporting networked discovery of and access to vital resources.
Some are recognizing distinct similarities between this type of highly efficient sense-making in the natural world, and the role modern databases, wikis, and social media sites can play in supporting improved knowledge creation and sharing at a societal level12. One of the things my fellowship1 is focused on is understanding how we might enhance the ability of Land Grant personnel to more effectively contribute and gather “digital trace” through sociotechnical capabilities like metaliteracy, simultaneously and efficiently supporting both our individual work and collective mission.
Land Grant System as Emergent Platform
In his book Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation13, Steven Johnson explores why certain environments seem to be disproportionately better at generating and sharing good ideas. Drawing from science and history he outlines seven distinct patterns which appear again and again, animated in the video below. What he found was that contrary to the common myth of the isolated genius working alone in his lab until that fateful eureka moment occurs, great discoveries often evolve as slow hunches, maturing and connecting to other ideas over time before they’re fully developed. That “chance favors the connected mind”.
One of the key components of innovative environments are what he calls “emergent platforms”. Within the biological world Johnson uses the example of coral reefs, but similar patterns can be found in a variety of other environments, including online ones. By providing accessible and safe environments of confluence, and the necessary scaffolding for increasingly sophisticated collaborations, insights and adaptations, these platforms support innovation in a variety of forms, transforming relative deserts into rich and abundant ecosystems through mechanisms such as resource partitioning and reuse, symbiosis, and tight nutrient cycling.
“Liquid Networks” also play an important role in the development of innovative ideas and adaptations. These spaces or networks (physical or virtual) allow a diversity of ideas and elements to come together and combine in creative, and sometimes serendipitous or fortuitous ways. One way this happens in dense networks/populations is through what is called “information spillover” (similar to Bednar’s reference to institutional spillover above), where ideas and information are allowed to easily pass across and between domains or areas of interest, uninhibited by disciplinary silos.
Another important concept Johnson refers to is “stacking”, combining or re-appropriating previous innovations to create new ones, often in unusual and unexpected ways through what evolutionary biologists call exaptation. He uses the example of Tim Berners-Lee developing and combining several technologies (HTML, URI and HTTP) to create the World Wide Web (laying the groundwork for the modern Semantic Web stack I mentioned in an earlier post)
In my next post, I’ll be sharing my fellowship1 final report with several specific recommendations related to how we can work together on implementing the above ideas within the agrifood systems domain, transforming our Land Grant system into a “socio-technical platform supporting continuous learning and innovation”. On January 19th from 12-1pm Eastern Time I’ll also be sharing those results via an eXtension Zoom webinar. UPDATE -a recording of that presentation and the slides are now available here.
References
This Solving for Pattern series represents one effort to learn and work out loud as I pursue an eXtension supported “Land Grant Informatics” fellowship, exploring ways we might more effectively link people, technology and information in support of healthy people, food systems, communities, and our Land Grant mission.
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730. Modified version of paper originally presented to the Panel on Policy Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, December 1969.
Bednar, J., & Page, S. E. (2016). Complex Adaptive Systems and Comparative Politics: Modeling the Interaction between Institutions and Culture. Chinese Political Science Review, 1(3), 448–471. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-016-0039-6
Trist, E., & Bamforth, W. (1951) Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting, Human Relations, Vol. 4, 3-38 https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675100400101
Introne, J., Laubacher, R., Olson, G., & Malone, T. (2013). Solving Wicked Social Problems with Socio-computational Systems. KI – Künstliche Intelligenz, 27(1), 45–52. https://joshintrone.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/ai.pdf
Musil, J., Musil, A., Weyns, D., & Biffl, S. (2015). An architecture framework for collective intelligence systems. In Software Architecture (WICSA), 2015 12th Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on (pp. 21–30). IEEE. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=7158500
Cultivating Solutions in Place through a Network-Centric Approach
The Death of Expertise?
Many would agree our recent elections have revealed deep and troubling divides in our country. Though there are certainly several contributing factors some have framed and perhaps foretold this as part of a larger global populist wave rejecting what many perceive as elitist experts and technocrats out of touch with the values and needs of ordinary citizens. For those who seek to support evidence based decision making contributing to the long term well-being of society this presents a fundamental and possibly existential challenge. This is particularly true for our publicly accountable Land Grant system, requiring us to more critically reflect on how our research, learning and outreach mission and theory of change can be more responsive to the perceptions, motivations and lived reality of communities we serve.
Robert Allen, Founder & Strategy Director of UK based RedFox Strategy wrote about this anti-expert, anti-intellectualism phenomenon last June in his blog post Brexit & the Death of Expertise. He provides a suggestion those of us whose position and authority rests on our expert “branding” would be wise to heed lest (when?) the pitchforks come for us:
So the Expert Authority brands need to change their tone, their message, and their proof points. They have to be less patrician, and more persuasive. They need a new style of leadership. I suggest that subtle, nudging ‘leadership by partnership’ is the right tone.
Leadership by Partnership
This idea of leadership by partnership is certainly not new to many of us working within the Land Grant system, particularly within Cooperative Extension. Our own Extension system at Cornell states as much in its mission, declaring “We bring local experience and research based solutions together”. Yet as I highlighted in a previous post many have concerns about system rigging similar to those raised in our election, seeing our Land Grant system as favoring certain classes of individuals and interests1.
In fact for quite some time many have been calling for more collaborative connections between our on and off campus communities. Between January 1996 and March 2000 the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities held numerous meetings and produced six reports to build awareness among public universities of the need for higher education reform. A 1999 report, Returning to our roots: The engaged institution (Kellogg Commission, 1999) called for Land Grant Universities to move beyond a one-way transfer of information and technology to communities and be more “sympathetically and productively involved with their communities” (emphasis added).
Since that time concerns have continued to be voiced from both within and outside of Land Grant institutions regarding their ability to fulfill their knowledge with a public purpose mission. Several have suggested that practitioners and public stakeholders must be more actively engaged in the knowledge co-creation process, with Land Grant institutions reducing their emphasis on prescriptive recommendations and embracing a more facilitative or catalytic development model better leveraging local resources and networks in support of local solutions. Those voices have been perhaps most loud within the context of agrifood systems efforts seeking to address concerns around economic equity, social justice and inclusion, and environmental sustainability, with some suggesting we become “leaderful catalysts for change” (Colasanti, Wright, & Reau, 2009).
Reimagining the People’s Colleges in a Networked Era
Scott Peters, a Land Grant scholar at Cornell has been one thought leader in this area. In 2013 Cornell’s Mann Library hosted a panel discussion moderated by Peters looking at how Land Grant institutions might learn from past mistakes and better honor our Lincoln legacy. This coincided with the rerelease of Ruby Green Smith’s 1949 book The People’s Colleges, a history of Cornell University’s extension work. In it she states:
There is vigorous reciprocity in the Extension Service because it is with the people, as well as “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It not only carries knowledge from the State Colleges to the people, but it also works in reverse: it carries from the people to their State Colleges practical knowledge whose workability has been tested on farms, in industry, in homes, and in communities…Mutual benefits result for the people and for the educational institutions they support.
That conversation was extended nationally via a year-long series of guest blog posts on the Imagining America -Extension Reconsidered site. In one post asking Where does “legitimate” knowledge come from? Craig Hassel from the University of Minnesota suggests:
Cooperative Extension [should provide] leadership in… creating space and building the trust needed for interfacing academic and non-academic forms of human knowledge. Trust-building, deep listening, cognitive frame-shifting, open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, self-reflective and critical thinking [are] key skills and dispositions in learning from community how to navigate the sometimes challenging cultural terrain and complex knowledge commons.
John Gerber, Professor of Sustainable Food and Farming at the University of Massachusetts, goes further, stating:
New communications technologies coupled with the emergence of societal networking and community-focused action groups will continue to erode the monopoly universities hold on advanced learning… universities must adapt quickly if they are to thrive in a world of rapid, interactive information flow… The pattern of increasing competition, public distrust, and declining support is likely to continue unless a new defining vision for public universities emerges… The next phase in the development of the public university will be a community-focused learning network that extends access to all citizens through university outreach and online instruction in the communiversity of the 21st century… public universities able to build on the land grant ideal, re-engage with the larger community, and take advantage of communications and societal networking technologies will thrive in the 21st century.
Creating a New “Environment of Connectivity”, Locally and Globally
My own work has been inspired by these and similar calls to action in the library world, including R. David Lankes’ vision of libraries as platforms helping unlock the potential of our communities, supporting knowledge creation through conversation in those communities. As an Outreach and Engagement Specialist at Mann Library for many years I brought on and off campus communities together for such conversations through a wide range of collaborative programming including an award winning Connected Minds, Resilient Communities series. I’ve also contributed to and helped catalyze a variety of capacity building efforts with civic/non-profit groups engaged in agriculture and food systems work.
Much of that incorporates what community development practitioner Bill Traynor calls a “network-centric” approach. In the article Building Community in Place: Limitations and Promise (Traynor, 2007, drawing from his experiences leading the successful CDC Lawrence Community Works) Traynor states:
To effectively attack the challenges of building genuine community, means investing in opportunities and space for peer-to-peer connections and resourcing the information infrastructure –literally the roads and trails of opportunity today… a functional civic infrastructure that optimizes the aggregate contribution of all residents and stakeholders… facilitating the cumulative capacities for collective decision-making, problem solving, mutual support, collective action, information sharing, and the creation and exchange of value” [e.g. time, goods, services, knowledge]
Central to LCW’s theory of change is creating a new “environment of connectivity” where residents can more easily connect to information, opportunity and each other. One of the challenges I’ve had in applying this to my boundary spanning work with those outside of the library is building understanding and active ongoing support for what knowledge management specialists recognize as a sociotechnical systems approach. Some of these difficulties are associated with linking relatively narrow, shorter term outcomes/logic models of resource constrained programs and organizations with longer term systemic change efforts, justifying investments in shared infrastructure supporting both including collaborative platforms.
Growing interest in Collective Impact approaches from many of the groups I work with has helped make the case for this work. First popularized by John Kania and Mark Kramer in their 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article, Collective Impact approaches seek to realize large scale social change through broad cross-sector coordination. Its worth noting how these efforts deal with the issue of expertise mentioned in the beginning of this post: complementing the insight of subject experts, Collective Impact initiatives also include “context experts” with lived experience relevant to the issue they are seeking to address. Kania and Kramer suggest five conditions that together produced greater alignment and collective impact: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and supporting and connecting the others, backbone support. Information and communications systems are an important part of the backbone support role.
Resources like the Knight Foundation and Monitor Institute Community Information Toolkit and their advocacy for building stronger communities through information exchange via “Community Information Ecosystems” have also helped make the case for such infrastructure needs.
In my work with agriculture and food systems initiatives I’ve extended this ecosystem model as part of necessary code-switching away from technical language toward more earth-based, biologically oriented metaphors. One I’ve had the most success with is equating these systems to what Paul Stamets has called the “Earth’s natural internet“: mycelium, underground fungal networks supporting the exchange of nutrients and “information” (e.g. communicating to neighbors that pests may be in the area, signaling a chemical defense response) via mutually-beneficial mycorrhizal partnerships with (and between) around 90% of land based plants. That includes their role in supporting healthy resilient agroecosystems as “agro-ecosystem engineers” (Cameron, 2010). Some have used this metaphor in suggesting a move away from higher commitment membership based communities of practice (Engeström, 2007) toward more loosely bounded mycorrhizal learning networks, echoing Traynor’s call for a shift away from membership focused movements.
I’ve found this metaphor useful in international contexts as well, most recently favored by colleagues in Australia. After several of them attended a presentation of mine at the 2014 National eXtension Conference in Sacramento I was invited there this spring, as a Visiting Fellow hosted by the State of Victoria’s Agriculture and Rural Division. There was interest in how they might apply these networked approaches in their own knowledge management work. Lacking an Extension system as we know it2 they are looking for ways they can still “collaborate across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries, enabling the emergence of a national innovation system through public knowledge management” (Vines, Jones, & McCarthy, 2015). While there I was able to learn about interesting work being done across the state, including the Birchip Cropping Group, an innovative farmer-based RD&E entity, as well as eXtension type approaches being explored in Australia. After returning to the U.S. I co-presented with one of my Australian colleagues Richard Vines at the National eXtension conference in San Antonio and continue to draw from this fertile and collaborative exchange in my current eXtension sponsored Land Grant Informatics fellowship3 (which this blog series is a part of).
Acknowledging Our Biases and Drives
Of course none of this capacity building work happens in a vacuum. Personal and organizational capabilities, perceptions, biases and motivations play an important role in shaping these socio-technical “environments of connectivity”, how or whether they are utilized (for good or otherwise), and whether they represent a level playing field. I touched on some of those issues in my last post, including various forms of bias at the individual, organizational and systemic level, and how the principles of self-affirmation theory should be recognized in addressing those.
By Christina Donelly, Jtneill – https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11946408
Self-determination theory (SDT) also tells us there are three innate universal human drives: the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Daniel Pink’s book Drive adapted research from this for the business world following similar themes, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, while lacking an emphasis on relatedness. SDT holds that we are most deeply engaged and do our most creative work when we feel that we’re acting according to our own will on goals we find meaningful. When all these are experienced, through our “inherent growth tendencies” nurtured in part through social environments, there are positive consequence (e.g. well-being, growth and innovation).
Working Out Loud offers one way of expressing those growth tendencies. Many of the initiatives I and my Community, Local and Regional Food Systems CoP cohorts work on or with are clear expressions of these as well. These are framed internally and externally in various ways, using terms like Collective Impact, civic agriculture, food security and food sovereignty, often concerned with cultivating not just food but valuable assets like self-efficacy and social capital.
Yet when these universal drives are thwarted, potentially by a variety of factors including some outside of one’s individual control, there are negative consequences. Reading Chris Arnade’s recent article in the Guardian it’s easy to see that many who voted in the recent election are behaving in accordance with the principles of both self-affirmation and self-determination theory. This suggests some critically important work to be done by those of us dedicated to public service.
Our Work Ahead: Cultivating Smarter Communities through Network Weaving
As Harold Jarche often articulates, networked approaches can support self-determination, at work and beyond. That includes (drawing in part on David Ronfeldt’s Tribes-Institutions-Markets-Networks Theory illustrated below) networks as an evolutionary step of societal organization. According to Ronfeldt all four of these forms can (and ideally should) co-exist as we enter the next evolution of society, but networks will dominate. Yet each form is ethically neutral, and can be used for good or ill. So for example, the tribal form, which can co-exist with the network form, can foster communal solidarity and mutual caring, as well as narrow, bitter clannishness.
Tribes-Institutions-Markets-Networks (TIMN) Evolutionary Forms (from http://jarche.com/2016/07/principles-and-models-for-the-network-era/)
In a June 2016 post on the “Network Revolution” I mentioned David Weinberger’s urging in his book Too Big to Know for us to “build networks that make us smarter”. It’s worth noting here that the rest of that quote includes the following: “especially since, when done badly, networks can make us distressingly stupider.” One of the things he and others refer to is the power of echo chambers –the ability to surround ourselves with the voices of others sharing the same experiences, values and biases. With confirmation bias selectively allowing in information reinforcing those while dismissing any dissonant messages, this can lead to positive feedback loops amplifying those over time. So the question still to be answered is if we can harness these tools in a way which allows us to embrace difference as he suggests below…
The Net lowers the barriers to encountering and interacting with that which is different. The barriers that remain are not technology’s but our own. We have lost every excuse not to embrace difference… Perhaps our hyperlinked infrastructure will give us a self-understanding that makes it easier for our curiosity and compassion to overcome our self-centered fears.
Many are already helping lead the way calling for more networked (Blay-Palmer, Sonnino, & Custot, 2016; Lubell, Niles, & Hoffman, 2014; Nelson, Coe, & Haussmann, 2016), resilient (Anderson, 2015) knowledge systems necessary for realizing sustainable, secure, just and self-determined agrifood systems (Colasanti, Wright, & Reau, 2009). In Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving, Valdis Krebs and June Holley provide more generalized suggestions relevant to the work of many Extension educators:
Communities are built on connections. Better connections usually provide better opportunities. But, what are better connections, and how do they lead to more effective and productive communities? How do we build connected communities that create, and take advantage of, opportunities in their region or marketplace? How does success emerge from the complex interactions within communities?
This paper investigates building sustainable communities through improving their connectivity – internally and externally – using network ties to create economic opportunities. Improved connectivity is created through an iterative process of knowing the network and knitting the network.
If we’re going to address increasingly wicked and interwoven problems like climate change, food security and growing wealth inequality I believe Cooperative Extension and the Land Grant system as a whole must more fully acknowledge the increasingly networked nature of our world, and both the challenges and opportunities that presents. In my next post I’ll share some specific findings and recommendations for how we might enhance our “socio-technical capabilities” in support of such network-centric approaches to realizing healthy people, farms, communities and food systems, by reimagining our Land Grant system as a networked knowledge commons.
In the meantime, those who would like to learn more about how these approaches can be applied to food systems work can check out the North American Food Systems Network (NAFSN) Good Food Talk webinar led by Curtis Ogden Nov. 16th, on Collaborative Pathways to Change: Tools for Just and Sustainable Food Systems Networks4, as well as past webinars on their website.
And as always, comments and feedback always appreciated here or offline.
Endnotes
In its report Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over University Agriculture (Food and Water Watch, 2012) the Food & Water Watch calls attention to how the funder effect can corrupt the public research mission of Land Grant universities, inhibiting their ability to effectively and equitably help farmers improve their practices and livelihoods.
For a historical overview of Extension in Australia, I refer you to Warren Hunt, Colin Birch , Jeff Coutts & Frank Vanclay’s 2012 paper, The Many Turnings of Agricultural Extension in Australia, The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, 18:1, 9-26, DOI: 10.1080/1389224X.2012.638780. Some might find their perspectives on cyclical change (reminiscent of a panarchical view) useful in seeing our own CES in a historical light. They frame historical changes in terms of four reoccurring cyclical “turnings”: crises, highs, awakenings and unravelling. Perhaps relevant to current conditions, Unravelling, a downcast period of weakening institutions as older orders decay, is followed by Crisis, a decisive period of upheaval, where a sense of urgency drives deep institutional transition.
This Solving for Pattern series represents one effort to learn and work out loud as I pursue an eXtension supported “Land Grant Informatics” fellowship, exploring ways we might more effectively link people, technology and information in support of our Land Grant mission and communities we serve.
The eXtension Community, Local, and Regional Food Systems CoP is partnering with NAFSN on a Food Systems Development Certificate, and my hope is we can work with experts like June Holley and Curtis Ogden on developing a network literacy and leadership competency framework as a part of that.
References
Anderson, M. D. (2015). The role of knowledge in building food security resilience across food system domains. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 5(4), 543–559. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0311-3
Blay-Palmer, A., Sonnino, R., & Custot, J. (2016). A food politics of the possible? Growing sustainable food systems through networks of knowledge. Agriculture and Human Values, 33(1), 27–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9592-0
Colasanti, K., Wright, W., & Reau, B. (2009). Extension, the land-grant mission, and civic agriculture: Cultivating change. Journal of Extension, 47(4), 1–10. https://www.joe.org/joe/2009august/a1.php
Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities., & National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. (1999). Returning to our roots : the engaged institution. Washington, D.C.: National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, Office of Public Affairs. http://www.aplu.org/library/returning-to-our-roots-the-engaged-institution.
Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age. Community Information Toolkit. Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, October 2009, http://infotoolkit.org/toolkit/
Lubell, M., Niles, M., & Hoffman, M. (2014). Extension 3.0: Managing Agricultural Knowledge Systems in the Network Age. Society & Natural Resources, 27(10), 1089–1103. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2014.933496
Nelson, R., Coe, R., & Haussmann, B. I. G. (2016). Farmer Research Networks As A Strategy For Matching Diverse Options And Contexts In Smallholder Agriculture. Experimental Agriculture, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0014479716000454
Smith, R. G. B., & Dillard, H. R., A2-Peters, Scott J. A.PY-2013. (2013). The people’s colleges : a history of the New York State extension service in Cornell University and the State, 1876-1948. Ithaca: Fall Creek Books. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100545940
Vines, R., Jones, M., & McCarthy, G. (2015). Collaborating across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries: enabling the emergence of a national innovation system through public knowledge management. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 13(2), 187–197. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/kmrp.2013.41
Weinberger, D. (2011). Too big to know : rethinking knowledge now that the facts aren’t the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room. New York: Basic Books. http://www.toobigtoknow.com/
“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this…We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.”
Martin Luther King Jr., in a sermon delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., March 31, 1968
Delivered four days before his assassination, Dr. King’s words seem more relevant than ever to the wickedly interconnected social, economic, and environmental problems we face today. Interestingly, he also called out the Land Grant system for selectively and unfairly “undergird[ing] its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor”1. After several recently settled discrimination lawsuits, concerted attempts are now being made to address these in the USDA.
What history like this shows us is that even the most well-meaning organizations and systems, including those intended to support “knowledge with a public purpose”, can suffer from the same blind spots and biases we experience at an individual level. Both are also prone to self-reinforcing/preserving tendencies or feedback loops which can perpetuate and even magnify often hidden or “implicit” bias, observed as confirmation bias and motivated reasoning2, and at a higher level, systemic or institutional bias3.
Continuous Cycles of Learning, through Reflection & Conversation
Yet because they have so much more influence, affecting many individuals at the same time while shaping the very playing field of opportunity (and perception of that field), it’s essential that systems as a whole and not just their constituent “parts” (e.g. people and projects) learn and evolve. That means repeatedly reflecting, critically, on systems level performance and impact, including emergent behaviors not readily identifiable at lower levels. And periodically revising definitions and metrics of success, and the methods used to achieve them, through continuous learning cycles.
it’s essential that systems as a whole and not just their constituent parts learn and evolve…by repeatedly reflecting, critically, on systems level performance and impact.. through continuous learning cycles.
Several years ago my own community convened a series of film screenings and discussions to explore how racial perceptions can contribute to and be reflected in structural barriers. Episode three of the series, The House You Live In, provided powerful insights into how institutions and policies can unfairly channel resources, power, status and wealth. In this case one of the greatest wealth building opportunities of the 20th century, the post WWII housing boom.
A Call for Equity, Inclusion & Transparency, Within & Without
An increasing concern for equity can be seen throughout Extension, through efforts like the Change Agents States project and various eXtension groups like the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion CoP. Equity was also a major focus of a Community, Local and Regional Food Systems CoP hosted Food Security conference in Cleveland4. Participatory research5 is one way Cooperative Extension is attempting to cultivate more equitable relations supporting knowledge production through reflexive practices.
Yet as this report on Land Grant response to the “Stakeholder Rule”6 from the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG) finds, there is more that can be done to promote inclusion and transparency in the Land Grant system. It reveals:
the enormous complexity of the Land Grant system and the considerable burden these institutions face in remaining viable and responsive in the current environment… How to design and manage each institution offering public service and scholarship so that it provides adequate accountability and full transparency (while honoring academic independence) without procedures that become too bureaucratic and burdensome, (which could limit communication and responsiveness) is the challenge for both the administration and the stakeholders who are the guardians of our Land Grant institutions. Stakeholders themselves must be the stewards of the Land Grant mission. It is not just the institutions that bear the burden of charting a responsible course…
In future posts7 I’ll share some further thoughts on how and why reimagining our Land Grant system as a networked knowledge commons can help address these needs. So that we and it as a whole might learn how to more equitably and effectively “undergird” and connect the diverse communities (of place, practice, interest, and inquiry) we serve, as well as the systems we engage with and rely on, including food systems.
Listen to this recording of Dr. King’s sermon starting around 14:10 to hear these words in his own voice
Recent political news articles have highlighted the work of scientists like Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, whose research into motivated reasoning has shown how difficult it can be to change misinformed beliefs about things like vaccinations and politics. Direct factual contradictions can have a “backfire effect”, actually increasing misperceptions, in line with self-affirmation theory. Suggested ways of addressing motivated reasoning include 1) boosting the self-worth of the receiver before 2) providing corrective information from trusted sources, 3) in an easy to understand format.
George Siemon, co-founder and CEO of the farmer-owned Organic Valley cooperative, mentions in this WorldAgNetwork interview systemic bias challenges (including from Land Grants) in developing that highly successful “social experiment disguised as a business.” OV now has farmer-owners in 34 states, Canada and Australia, with sales expected to rise above the $1 billion mark.
This eXtension article coming out of the 2014 CLRFS CoP Food Security Conference from Heather Hyden, Shorlette Ammons, and Jannety Mosley, “suggest[s] a possible framework for Cooperative Extension to engage in deep internal reflection on the role it serves as an institutional gatekeeper in the food justice movement.”
The “Stakeholder Rule” was passed by the U.S. Congress as part of the 1998 Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act. Its purpose was to “encourage broader and more transparent roles for stakeholders in the system of Agricultural Experiment Stations, Land Grant Universities, and Cooperative Extension.” The Rule for its implementation was published in 2000.
This Solving for Pattern series represents one effort to learn and work out loud as I pursue an eXtension supported “Land Grant Informatics” fellowship, exploring ways we might more effectively link people, technology and information in support of our Land Grant mission and communities we serve.
It’s always a pleasure reconnecting with and learning from colleagues at eXtension conferences. Last March’s in San Antonio was no different, which included convivial meals along the River Walk and several stimulating workshops.
Slide from UMN Extension program leader Nate Meyer’s presentation using a “Stacey Matrix” to illustrate zone of complexity.
One workshop led by my Network Literacy CoP cohorts included this video by UMN Extension program leader Nate Meyer. In it he encourages Extension to embrace its role cultivating social learning within networked innovation spaces known as “zones of complexity”. Identifiable in a variety of fields and circumstances (including health care), this can in turn create shared pools of collective knowledge which can be drawn on in response to wicked problems and grand challenges which no individual, program or institution can address on its own. [Net Lit CoP co-lead Bob Bertsch writes more about this in his highly recommended blog post Extension 2050: Working Within Networks]
There were also several inspiring keynote speakers at the conference, including John Stepper, author of Working Out Loud. A key strategy of WOL is cultivating relationship networks to enhance self-efficacy and work/life satisfaction by “leading with generosity”, providing insight and assistance to others without expectation of immediate return. Another keynote, Paul Pangaro, spoke about the importance of Extension “designing for conversation”, so the learning spaces we create might better support collaborative, innovative problem solving.
The Grand Challenge: Coordinating Knowledge Infrastructure to Unlock the Potential and Passions of Society
Both are aligned with similar ideas in the library world promoted by individuals such as R. David Lankes, who believes our primary role is the creation of knowledge in and with communities, through conversation. Because we are “in the conversation business”, and technology and particularly the internet is changing the role, form and location of conversations, we must now consider how to provide conversational, participatory network infrastructure. More recently, Lankes has been so bold as to say that THE grand challenge (defined as a societal-level problem that is solvable and has high potential rewards) for librarianship is “coordinating the knowledge infrastructure to unlock the potential and passions of society”. [See my previous blog post for other ideas related to networked knowledge creation, and eXtension’s investment in that capacity]
These approaches are all relevant to the work I and others do at Land Grant libraries like Cornell University’s Mann Library, in support of our diverse communities of inquiry and practice. They’re also related to a “Land Grant Informatics” research fellowship I’m currently pursuing with support from Cornell University Library and eXtension, exploring ways we might more seamlessly and effectively link people, technology and information in support of our Land Grant mission, the communities we serve, and timely, adaptive responses to complex problems. For my fellowship I’ll be focusing on healthy food systems, and issues such as climate change and food security.
This investigation is being informed by my colleagues, mentors and networks, as well as decades of front line experience in farming and food systems work before entering academia 20 years ago. Along the way I’ve been influenced by a number of practitioners and thinkers, including National Humanities Medal recipient Wendell Berry, who through his writings has helped me better appreciate the value of culture in agriculture. He’s also highlighted the importance of a systems perspective in preventing and solving wicked problems. In Solving for Pattern (Chapter 9 of The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural, North Point Press, 1981) Berry writes:
To the problems of farming, then, as to other problems of our time, there appear to be three kinds of solutions, [those which]…
1. Cause a ramifying series of new problems… that… arise beyond the purview of the expertise that produced the solution…
2. Immediately worsen the problem it is intended to solve, causing a hellish symbiosis in which problem and solution reciprocally enlarge one another…
The Community Club, from the 1918 publication “Farm knowledge… the farmer’s own cyclopedia”, available at http://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/browse/title/3074995.html
3. It is not until health is set down as the aim that we come in sight of the third kind of solution: that which causes a ramifying series of solutions… [with] a concern for pattern, for quality… [based on and reinforcing] relationships of mutual dependence.
As part of my own efforts to work out loud, over the next several months I’ll be sharing insights and reflections from my fellowship, as I explore how we might better “solve for pattern” within, across and beyond the Land Grant system. I’ll end this post with the image to the right, from a 1918 publication, The farmer’s own cyclopedia (available from one of Mann Library’s digital collections). In many ways I see Extension and eXtension at its best as modern versions of the “Community Club” illustrated here. My hope is this series itself will encourage and provoke ideas, information and inspiration from others, including those working outside of Extension and the Land Grant system. Please feel free to add your own thoughts and experiences operating in the zone of complexity below!
If there were one thing Paul Hill, millennial, Utah State University Extension assistant professor and 4-H agent, could change about the Extension culture it is convincing Extension workers and their bosses that each person should spend at least 10 percent of their time on social media.
“We are change agents trying to convince people to change how they garden or raise their kids but we can be reluctant to change how we do things,” he says.
Hill believes face to face contact remains important but social media helps continue conversations and build relationships. “We’ve been isolated in counties for a long time. Today we need to use new tools to be relevant reaching new audiences as well as collaborating with other agents,” he says. “We need to scale our services and move away from the mindset of this information is mine and this information is yours. Extension should be all about teamwork rather than a turf battle.”
Hill says eXtension is a tool with the infrastructure to reach more clients.
• He uses the https://search.extension.org/ function to find answers for his clients.
• He uses https://learn.extension.org/ for his professional development as well as sending pertinent recorded webinar links off to clients.
•He tells stories to his coworkers about what he has learned using eXtension (because they do ask how he knows the stuff he knows considering he has been in his job two years and he doesn’t have an agriculture background).
Hill has a story about goats and Christmas trees…and eXtension. A client asked him if goats should be fed Christmas trees. Hill tried a general search and the idea seemed to have merit. Then he used the Cooperative Extension search (https://search.extension.org/) and found peer-reviewed articles that had cautions about using the trees for the entire diet. Then he found cautions about cattle eating conifers. At that point, Hill submitted a question to Ask the Expert so the question he was asked would be public on eXtension.org and answered by a goat expert. Goats & Christmas Trees, https://ask.extension.org/questions/159811
Paul Hill believes Extension needs to move from an entitlement mindset to entrepreneurial mindset and he’s working hard to do that.
More about Paul Hill
His blog, Soft Leadership: Lighten up, Lead, and do work that matters, at http://www.paulallenhill.com/, has posts including “Extension is Broken” and “How to Fix Extension.”
Contrary to some perceptions, social networks aren’t just about what you ate for lunch or staying in touch with old friends. Social networks can provide a space for you to explore, learn, share, promote your work, and connect with geographically dispersed colleagues. Using a social network in these ways first requires you to be comfortable using the technology and understanding the communities’ norms.
Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have distinct cultures. They have their own language (“friend”, “RT”, “hashtag”, “OH”). They have their own rules for communication (140-character limit). They even have their own system for what is valued (“likes”, “favorites”, “shares”, “retweets”). Using traditional training presentations to prepare someone to use social tools is like showing someone vacation slides from Italy and expecting them to feel as though they went there and engaged in the culture.
The Twitter Cohort, a free learning experience presented by the eXtension Network Literacy Community of Practice, takes a new approach to introducing people to the social network Twitter by:
• Immersing participants in the culture to build a sense of social comfort
• Creating a community of learners to build a sense of social presence and promote social learning
• Providing “guides” to help learners find their way
In the Twitter Cohort, you will learn by doing. Over the course of 4 weeks:
• You’ll build your Twitter personal learning network centered around your interests.
• You’ll engage in conversations with a Twitter community that starts with your fellow cohort members and reaches across the world.
• You’ll start online relationships that will last into the future.
• You’ll begin to see how Twitter can be used for teaching, learning, and connecting.
Our “guides” and your fellow cohort participants will provide support throughout those four weeks.
Each Monday (Oct. 21 – Nov. 18) at 1 p.m. (ET) (note that the third session will meet Tuesday 11/12/13 to avoid Veterans Day conflicts), the Cohort will meet via web conference to ask questions, review material and discuss their experiences. If you can’t make one of the Monday 1 p.m. sessions, there will be a “catch up” session each Monday at 9 p.m. (ET).
Once you’ve registered for the Twitter Cohort, you’ll have access to “Guide Time,” designated times when our “guides” will be available to answer your questions and provide help via web conference.
eXtension’s Avatar Fitness Club in Second Life attracted 21,570 visits since opening on September 1. The club offers a social environment for changing habits and maintaining weight loss by virtually modeling a routine of regular exercise. The club is free to join, and visitors come from the USA and many countries around the world.
Research at University of Kansas, funded by the National Institutes of Health, indicates that a weight loss management program using a Second Life avatar can be as effective or even more so than attendance at a physical world clinic. See the research at http://www.jneb.org/article/S1499-4046(12)00667-7/abstract
Would you like to reach a global audience with your programming in Health and Wellness? In response to visitor requests, the Avatar Fitness Club will soon offer live workshops on nutrition and related topics. Will you consider teaching a class as a single event, or monthly, or even more? Training for our new group of virtual educators begins October 15.
For more information, contact LuAnn Phillips, eXtension Virtual 3D coordinator, luann.phillips@extension.org.
The Avatar Fitness Club is open on eXtension’s Morrill3 island in Second Life. Research at University of Kansas, funded by the National Institutes of Health, indicates that a weight loss management program using a Second Life avatar can be as effective or even more so than attendance at a physical world clinic. See the research at http://www.jneb.org/article/S1499-4046(12)00667-7/abstract
The club offers a social environment for changing habits and maintaining weight loss through regular exercise and nutrition education. It will feature content from several eXtension communities of practice as well as from throughout the land-grant university system. Activities include cycles, treadmills, yoga, climbing wall, lap pool, weight room, dance aerobics, and exercise mats. Soon live speakers and discussion groups will be added to the mix. The club has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/avatarfitness.
Avatar Fitness Club has attracted more than 2,400 visits in the first three days, with engagement lasting an average of 30 minutes or more. Total visits to eXtension 3D content in Second Life for the period January through August 2013: 40,286.
eXtension in Second Life® is on target for an outstanding 600% increase in vistor traffic in 2013. The key to this success is to regularly feature content that is fresh, dynamic, relevant, and fun.
The next featured event will be Bedbug Hotel, opening June 10. In this scenario, visitors will learn facts about the growing bedbug problem and how to protect themselves while traveling. The virtual “Littletown Inn” is a classy looking establishment, apparently clean, but this should not give visitors a false sense of security. Bedbugs can lurk in any hotel room (spoiler alert–they do!) Will visitors make it through check in and arrival without being bitten? Or will they find the telltale signs of bedbug activity, report it to the manager, and receive a gift from the hotel?
eXtension’s current featured event, Virtual Food Safety Inspector, has attracted more than 8,000 visits in just six weeks. Far more engaging than a static web page, this environment challenges visitors to hunt for 16 food safety hazards in the local diner. Along the way folks learn about food safety, and those who persevere to the end win a prize package of virtual goodies. Virtual Food Safety Inspector will remain open, and is ideal for educators to use as a teaching tool. Contact eXtension’s Virtual Worlds Coordinator, LuAnn Phillips, for information on how to enhance your programming with virtual 3D content.
