Tools and Services – Page 2 – Extension Foundation

eXtension recently went through a redesign of extension.org. As project manager, I found it a great experience, not only to work with our engineers, but to observe the design process and how our web developer navigated through the project.

I learned a lot from this project: the importance of being agile and maintaining precise focus on the goals. But one of the most powerful takeaways was a simple lesson that applies to way more than a redesign project. Sometimes called “working out loud, it was to–at all times–record your ideas and decisions in an open platform for all stakeholders to see and provide input.

Recording allows you to consistently capture value from a team’s conversation. For example, at every meeting we had with stakeholders, our agenda and notes were shared (eXtension Google Apps) and deliverables and decisions were accessible to everyone within the organization (Slack).

When you record every important concept and decision, you’ll discover that you will reduce and even eliminate repetitive discussions. During the redesign, if we sensed we already discussed the topic, our records captured past decisions and allowed the team to pause and look back at the decisions we already made. If we already made a decision, we could immediately acknowledge it and move forward.

By the end of the redesign, we had generated a vast collection of shared notes that we could easily access and that we had all seen before. When we assessed the collection afterwards, it illuminated how much work was done and confirmed the decisions the team acted on. Our redesign kick-started the process that will be the underpinning for all future design work.

The nice part about ‘working out loud’ is it easily applies to all meetings, not just a redesign project.

Mention the word “course” in an educational environment, and what is it that normally comes to peoples’ minds? In all likelihood, it involves reading documents, watching videos, submitting homework assignments, completing projects, taking tests, responding to surveys, and maybe somewhere down the line, gaining a certificate or diploma—something to formally acknowledge satisfactory completion of those weeks of work. The Extension Foundation’s online course system, campus.extension.org–a Moodle learning management system–does a remarkable job of delivering such packages of resources and activities. And in Moodle or any other learning management system, this is called a “course.”

But what if all you need for your Extension program is the delivery of just one or two of these resources and activities? Is that a “course?” Well, if you use Moodle to deliver them, yes it is. Take any combination of any number of learning resources and activities and package them for organized delivery, and it is still called a course—in Moodle.

I bring this up because Extension educators are finding many creative ways to deliver courses through Campus, where those courses are very limited in scope. For example, one course on Campus is comprised of a collection of videos about judging horses. There are no tests, no course requirements; just this collection of videos for people to view as few or as many as they want. Why use Moodle to present them? Because Moodle provides a way to track participation, control access to the course, charge a fee, and even gather feedback through customer satisfaction evaluations or surveys.

What about a webinar or recording of a webinar? Might you want to collect demographic information from the participants? How about offering a certificate or a badge for having successfully passed a test on the content of the webinar? Might you want to open a chat room or online forum to discuss the webinar after it is over? Could there possibly be other resources or activities you’d like to make available to participants? And, did I mention that maybe you want to charge a fee for participation—or not?

The point is that Campus is a tool available for any Extension Educator who works for an Extension Foundation member institution (https://archive.extension.org/current/) You do not need a whole “typical” course to offer a course on Campus—just some learning resources or activities that you would like to make available to your audiences. Campus allows you make your courses as complex or as simple as needed. Check out https://archive.extension.org/tools-for-extension-professionals/campus-getting-started/ for more information on getting started.