Progress report for WPDP22-001
Project Information
This project provided agricultural educators with the experiences and support necessary to develop successful learner-centered educational programs through an outcome-based design approach with producers as co-educators. Outcome-based education is an instructional design framework that begins by asking what skills or knowledge learners must have to address an expressed need or opportunity in their lives or work. The project supported seven educators across Oregon to engage with producers throughout the educational planning and design process to ensure the resulting programs will meet the needs of the participating farmers and ranchers. Educators accepted into this project began the learner-centered design process by identifying a sustainable agriculture issue or topic to design an outcome-based educational program. To explore their existing teaching philosophy, the educators participated in a Real Colors® temperament workshop and completed a personal learning styles assessment. Educators also investigated the core principles of adult education and how to implement effective teaching and learning strategies. To create content, participants received educational design and planning tools with guidance on instructional design, engaging with farmers as co-educators, and teaching and learning plans. Throughout the project, educators received mentoring from the experienced farmer-educators and others on the leadership team. Cohort members had extensive opportunities to engage directly with one another to share information, practice new skills, and provide peer feedback to increase learning opportunities. At the final cohort retreat, participants shared insights from their process of working with a producer co-educator, captured self-reflections on their learning experiences, and contributed to a ripple effect map. This project resulted in a cohort-based process and transferable resources that others can use with educators further to promote effective, sustainable farming and ranching practices.
- To increase agricultural educators' knowledge and skills to create instructional designs that will enable producers as co-educators to achieve relevant, authentic learning outcomes and, therefore, make the desired changes and work to increase the sustainability of their farm and ranch operations.
- To expand agricultural educators' skills to more effectively facilitate adult learning experiences through having ASPs teach in project meetings using the practices outlined in Sustainable Agriculture Through Sustainable Learning (Bell and McAllister, 2021)
- To enhance agricultural educators' ability to engage with producers throughout the educational planning and design process to ensure the resulting programs will meet the needs of the participating farmers and ranchers.
- To support agricultural educators in exploring how personality tendencies and perspectives on learning influence their approaches to program design and teaching with producers.
- To expand agricultural educators' program evaluation skills to create instruments to gather valuable feedback from producers to improve future programs and document behavior change.
- To enable agricultural educators to gain the skills to conduct cost recovery, including funds to compensate producers as experts and educators.
- To empower farmers and ranchers to see themselves as co-educators and value their time by being paid as consultants.
- To engage agricultural educators in understanding the more significant effects of outcome-based, co-taught programming with producers to capture community-level impacts. Agricultural educators will also experience the power of Ripple Effect Mapping and be able to employ this approach in their programs.
- To articulate a professional development process and create transferable resources that can be used by others working with agricultural educators to promote further the implementation of effective sustainable farming and ranching practices.
Gantt Chart_Halbleib_WSARE PDP_2yr
Assumptions and resources
The approach reflects the beliefs and experiences of the project team, that providing the essential knowledge coupled with authentic learning experiences will translate into changes in how the participants engage with producers. The project funds will support the farmer-educators and principal investigator, producer workshop mini-grants, workbook graphic design, and workshop travel.
The two farmer-educators currently committed to working with this cohort will serve as mentors to the participants and share their hands-on experience and knowledge on how to increase progress towards sustainability when working in collaboration with producers. Colette DePhelps will contribute to team meetings, facilitation of in-person meetings, develop successful examples for the workbook, and facilitate evaluation and assessments. Mary Halbleib will coordinate the project, co-design project processes, co-instruct, develop the workbook, and manage program evaluation.
Recruitment plan
A single cohort of ASPs will be recruited at the beginning of the first year. To be accepted participants will have an expressed interest in improving their knowledge and skills in learner-centered approaches to adult education and developing an outreach program with producers that focuses on one or more aspects of enhancing agricultural sustainability.
Online meetings
Before each monthly meeting, an agenda was sent to gather suggestions for what would help the cohort at that stage in the program. The leadership team shared a core learning topic that was explored as part of an intentional sequence, and cohort members discussed new ideas, shared their experiences, and received feedback on their workshop plans. In these two-hour meetings, these educators had opportunities to lead part of the meeting by teaching their peers creative ways to implement the principles of adult education and gain confidence in their abilities.
In-person retreats
There were two in-person workshops to go deeper into the work and enable further co-learning. The first retreat was designed for cohort members to explore their learning styles and teaching approaches and draft outcome-based education designs. Participants gained insights into their existing teaching frameworks using the Real Colors® assessment tool, completed their initial teaching plans with feedback from peers and farmers-educators, and shared learnings from self-study on agricultural sustainability. The second retreat focused on sharing lessons learned, exploring program evaluation data, participating in a Ripple Effect Mapping process, and a final reflection to unpack this professional development experience.
Producer workshops
Collaborating with producers experienced in sustainable agriculture, the cohort members designed and implemented producer-centered workshops that employ active learning approaches and are co-taught with experienced producers.
Cooperators
- - Technical Advisor - Producer (Educator)
- - Technical Advisor - Producer (Educator)
- - Technical Advisor
Education
This project is based upon an outcome-based and learner-centered approach to co-learning with a diverse agricultural educator cohort. Cohort members represent Extension, a state agency and a not-for-profit organization. The five-member leadership team includes academics and experienced farmer-educators and meets monthly with the cohort members for two hours to share experiences and support the exchange of ideas for creating and implementing producer-centered approaches and how to engage with a producer from the start. Each meeting and the in-person retreats employ active learning approaches, peer teaching, and open conversation to create a supportive space to explore potentially challenging topics and make it safe not to know. The project also uses an Extension Foundation Campus site to share resources, archive project files, and post files for feedback. The cohort members adapt the strategies shared in the project to co-create and co-teach producer-centered sustainable agriculture programming.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Enable cohort members to find a producer-educator to work with, build a relationship with this producer as a co-educator, co-create an educational program plan, and co-teach the educational program with the producer as a co-educator
Each month for two hours, the five-member leadership team and the cohort of seven agricultural educators meet to 1) explore new ways of working with producers as co-educators, 2) discuss options for using a producer-centered and outcome-based educational planning framework, 3) gain skills for implementing effective education with adult audiences and 4) share ideas and provide each other with feedback on educational plans (aka workshopping). During this time, the cohort members co-led educational programming for producers.
In 2022, the leadership team recruited cohort members, and the cohort began meeting as a group in October.
The cohort and leadership team created a Community Agreement to outline our expectations for how we will work together and treat each other.
We explored how to adapt existing educational planning tools and created new ones for use with producers as co-educators.
In the 2023 cohort meetings, a pair of cohort members taught the group using one of the five practices in the SARE Sustainable Agriculture Through Sustainable Learning publication.
We experimented with discussion boards and the project leadership team offered office hours between the monthly meetings to support cohort members.
The cohort members co-led educational programming with producer co-educators.
Educational & Outreach Activities
2 annual in-person cohort retreats
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
Here are highlights from the 2023 retreat survey, annual project survey, and annual leadership team and cohort member reflections.
The annual retreat evaluation captured the value of this in-person experience in building trust and connection in a cohort-based process. Quotes from cohort members about the most valuable thing gained from this experience:
Building relationships, learning from others, seeing the importance of workshopping, personality test
More clarity about education program design to meet learning outcomes AND connection to my peers and program trainers.
Engagement with peers in discussing program planning.
Recommendations about how to work with my producer co-educator
Insight from cohort members and producers while workshopping my idea. Their outside perspective was invaluable.
Insights captured through the 2023 annual cohort survey:
Seven of the eight cohort members shared that it is important to very important, on a five-point scale from not important to very important, to have experienced producer-educators on the leadership team. Two selected quotes:
I think this is tremendously important because we get to hear honest perspectives from the producers
themselves. It's important for us to ask people how they define success, rather than being prescriptive from an
academic standpoint.
Because their perspective and insight are helpful for creating and developing trusting relationships with our
producer co-educators, which is a core aspect of the project. I don't know what it's like to be a producer, so I like
that I have a resource to reach out to for advice; that way, I'm less likely to make mistakes that might threaten the
relationships I'm trying to build.
Seven of the eight respondents shared that the retreat was very helpful, on a five-point scale from not helpful to very helpful, to making progress on their project. Half of the cohort members have gotten help from another cohort member on their project
Two examples of what went well between the cohort member and producer-educator when planning the project together:
Identified key areas that producers might feel stress about and accordingly changed our educational plan.
We focused on creating learning outcomes and the associated learning activities based directly on the producer educator's experiences.
All cohort members who started their educational projects have used the outcome-based education design template to focus their educational design.
Five of the cohort members have shared their learning from this project with others:
I talk often about how much this has informed and improved my own lessons. I mentioned this in a working group
meeting with my colleagues, who were interested in learning more about improving their adult education methods. I shared the link to the SARE publication with them.
Shared learning and insights gained from the cohort; shared how important it is to create peer-to-peer learning
environments; shared how important it is to get feedback on presentations and trainings with others ahead of time
Through meetings, when planning other workshops, etc.
I've shared this experience with several people in my program and in cross-organizational planning teams.
Just today I shared a process I used in a focus group with farmers with some of my colleagues that was a direct
result of having worked on the mental models section of the SARE publication as part of our cohort meetings.
Other feedback the cohort members wanted to share:
It's a valuable group and I'm learning skills and ideas that I think are going to set me up for success in the
long-term since I deliver A LOT of trainings!
I very much appreciate being given room to be creative, but I need enough structure to let me know that my ideas
fall within the scope of the project. I haven't felt entirely assured on that point. Apart from that, I have loved being
a part of this project and group. I have learned so much, and I think that helps my "students" learn more as well.
THANK YOU so much for creating this space!
Learning captured through the 2023 leadership team and cohort member written reflections:
Leadership Team: Lessons Learned
- The inclusion and recognition of diverse perspectives, experiences, and knowledge bases have made this project particularly impactful. The leadership team, comprising academics and producer-educators, provides a model for collaborative learning and allows the leadership team to support the varying needs of cohort members effectively.
- Leadership team members learned how being leaders involves actively listening to others and responding to the evolving needs of cohort members. This means empowering cohort members to actively engage in their learning while offering guidance or challenging members to think differently about practical ways to apply new ideas in real-world situations.
- The guides and templates for outcomes-based and learner-centered teaching have broadly applied to many unique contexts. The leadership team and cohort members have reported changing their practices or programming in response to these learning materials.
Cohort Members: Impactful Resources and Activities
- It has been beneficial for everyone to engage in the process of sharing resources, discussing ideas, and providing and receiving feedback. This space for learning allows everyone to support each other in mutual growth.
- The retreat's in-person meeting format invited greater engagement, trust, and collaboration.
- The monthly meetings keep cohort members connected and on track.
- Many found the SARE publication to be a helpful resource. Working through this document on the best practices for adult education as a group provided inspiration and will provide guidance when designing future programming.
- Cohort members used the tools and templates for planning workshops with learner-centered outcomes in different projects and contexts.
- Having producer-educator perspectives within the project has enabled cohort members to understand producer experiences better.
Cohort Members: Key Personal Learnings
- Members have focused more on learning outcomes after exploring ways to intentionally connect learning objectives to activities.
- By designing programs or projects with real-world applications and practicality, members center the needs of learners. This includes supporting people’s learning by connecting their existing knowledge to new information or opportunities for skill development.
- Perspectives have been shifted to see producers and clients as co-educators. Recognizing this has encouraged members to involve producers in planning processes meaningfully.
Spring 2024 Retreat Reflection Summary
Sharing New Ideas and Perspectives
At the 2024 spring retreat, the cohort members shared diverse ideas and perspectives and experienced personal growth. One member expressed how the cohort model was personally advantageous, stating, “I learn a lot from the other cohort members, who work in areas different from mine or sometimes similar to it, which broadens my understanding of how things work and are connected, might give me ideas about how to do things differently/better in my own work.” This journey of self-discovery and learning was echoed by several other members, who found the retreat a transformative experience, helping them re-center the perspectives and perceptions of farmer-educators in their work. A member shared, “I have more understanding of the complexities involved with Extension meeting the needs of farmers.”
Building Trusting Relationships
The retreat provided cohort members with the opportunity to further build relationships with one another, developing a stronger foundation for future collaborative efforts. A cohort member shared their perspective on how connecting with cohort members was enriching: “Extended time together gives the ability to relax into each other’s company, which frees my flow of ideas. Getting to know cohort members better and in an informal way (during breaks and such) deepens my understanding of them and improves my ability to communicate effectively with them.” The feedback from many cohort members underlined how “Sharing a space has helped create a sense of cohesion with other group members.” Developing this sense of community at the retreat helped increase the motivation and confidence of cohort members as they moved forward with their projects. When discussing their next steps, most cohort members described how they plan to reach out to one another to engage in future collaborative efforts.
Space for Reflection
The feedback from cohort members highlighted how the retreat provided a space for them to internally and collaboratively reflect on their projects. Cohort members described how the retreat offered an “opportunity to stop/pause and focus.” They explained, “It gave me time to think, in-depth, about questions and answers to what is being developed.” The retreat allowed cohort members to spend time deliberating the next steps for their projects. A cohort member said, “It takes time– every educational event will offer unexpected lessons learned and new opportunities for refinement.” Taking the time to reflect on their projects and learn from one another in this retreat helped cohort members identify ways to better assess the various aspects of their projects.
The cohort and leadership team co-created a Ripple Effect Map that captures the outcomes and connections resulting from this project. Cultivating Impactful Programs_2024