Wednesday, December 8, 2021
Measuring the Impact of Extension Programming to Communicate Value
- To enhance one's ability to: 1) create, 2) summarize and interpret, and 3) effectively communicate data-driven products to demonstrate program impact and public value.
- To increase the use of data for 1) describing community and program context, and 2) program planning and design.
Morning Wellness Session (Wear Comfortable Clothes!)
6:00am - Meditation Is Medicine, Roxane E. Hearn, PhD, NBC-HWC
10:00am - Deans Welcome
10:10am - Associate Dean, Julieann Stawicki
10:20am - Conference Chair, Danielle Hairston Green: Greetings & Conference Co-Chair, Greg Johll: Housekeeping
10:30am - Capacity Building Chair, Christian Schmeider, Learning Objectives (Day Two)
10:45am - Activities and Networking Chair, Jessica Beckendorf
10:50am - Introduction of Keynote Chair, Chris Stark
11:00am - Plenary: Make Evaluation Work for The Greater Good of Inclusive Excellence, Equity & Social Justice: It Works if You Responsively Work It!
Hazel Symonette, Program Development & Assessment Specialist Emerita, is Evaluation Researcher & Facilitator at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She is an active UW Teaching Academy Fellow and the Social Justice Educator with the UW First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Program/Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives.
Her work focuses on capacity-building strategies using multi-level assessment/evaluation processes to advance diversity-grounded, equity-enabling personal transformation, organizational development and social justice change agendas. That work undergirds her long-standing UW initiatives - 1998 to 2017 - creating and managing cross-campus communities of praxis focused on authentically inclusive and vibrantly responsive teaching, learning, living, and working environments that are conducive to success for all.
Dr. Symonette is very active within the professional evaluation community. She has served on the American Evaluation Association Board of Directors, as Co-Chairs of AEA's Building Diversity Initiative and the Multi-Ethnic Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Group as well as many other progressive change initiatives. Most recently, she served on the AEA Task Force on Evaluator Competencies. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation - initially as AEA's Representative and now as an At-Large member. Most joyfully, she serves as Trainer & Coach for the AEA signature GEDI Program - Graduate Education Diversity Internship: a program she co-founded.
12:00pm - Connecting with Courageous Questions
1:00pm - Breakout Sessions
| Session Title | Description | Speakers |
| Presentation: Beyond the Numbers: Documenting and Understanding Program Outcomes with Qualitative Methods | In this session, you will broaden your understanding of qualitative methods, and you will learn some tips for collecting and analyzing data qualitative data. We will show you how you can use Focus Groups, Ripple Effect Mapping, and drawings/concept mapping to better understand participant experience of programming, and how to measure and communicate educational outcomes with those methods. We'll provide you with some tools that help you decide when these methods might be useful for you, and provide pointers for analyzing the rich data you'll be collecting. | Jenna Klink, Josset Gauley, Amulya Rao |
| Panel: Beyond the Emails and Flyers: Reach New Audiences Using Active Multimodal Marketing | Are you seeing the same faces at your programs? Are you struggling to reach new audiences? Go beyond the typical passive strategies for program promotion. In this panel discussion you will learn: - Why and how you need to plan, budget resources, and use active and multimodal forms of marketing to increase your outreach efforts -- How you can use marketing toolkits to provide consistent messaging, advance the Extension brand, and reach new audiences -- How to use data to evaluate your marketing efforts to make real-time adjustments and know what to do next time. - We will use real life Extension programming to illustrate successful active marketing strategies. At the end of this session, you will be inspired to try different methods to reach new audiences and increase your program's impacts. | Janell Wehr, Moderator; Darrin Kimbler, Agriculture Educator, Iron County; Julie Hill, Horticulture Outreach Specialist Rock and Walworth Counties; Kevin Graeme, Information Architect & Strategist, UW-Madison Division of Extension |
| Presentation: How Volunteers Add Public Value to Extension and How You Can Document Volunteer Impact | WI Extension has over 12,000 volunteers. Volunteers impact communities where they live and work. Their value goes beyond the scope of the program and leads to changes in community conditions. How are you capturing what volunteers add to Extension programs in your community? Are you capturing what volunteers contribute outside of Extension as a result of their volunteer efforts? What are specific areas you can measure to document organizational and public value? Join with NC Region Volunteer Specialists to examine survey questions where volunteers shared their opinions about how volunteering with 4-H contributed to public value. Specifically - stronger communities, better community connections, healthier communities, increased civic involvement. Explore how you can document both the organizational and public value of the volunteers you work with to document the impact of stakeholders in your communities. | Kandi O'Neil, New Colleague Onboarding Director/Volunteer Leadership Specialist, Professor - UW-Madison Division of Extension; Sarah Maass, District Extension Agent 4-H Youth Development, Kansas State University Reserach and Extension; Rachelle Vettern, Leadership & Volunteer Development Specialist, Professor, North Dakota State University Extension Center for 4-H Youth Development |
| Presentation: Logic Models 101: A Tool for Effective Program Planning, and a Foundation for Communicating the Value of Our Work | New to program planning? Confused about where to start? Challenged with thinking through how to approach your plan of work? Ready for a refresher on logic model lingo? If the answer to any of these questions is YES, this session is for you. In this session, we'll overview the very basics of program planning and introduce logic models as an effective tool for program planning. If you've never been exposed to logic models, or if you would like some more practice or a review, this session is for you. You may also pick up tips for using logic modeling with program partners as you work them to design educational and outreach programs. | Kadi Row |
| Flipped Classroom: New Kid on the Block: Wordpress Block Editor Basics | WordPress has had its biggest change since its inception and we want you to try it out! This change, known as the WordPress Block Editor, has introduced several new and easier ways to create visually interesting, quality content. Think of Blocks as Legos that you can arrange and move around to create slick, modern, mobile friendly content on your site in half the time. What a great way to share our data driven impacts with external audiences! This session will give you exclusive access to your own sandbox block editor site, allow you to showcase the page you create, and could land your site on a list to be considered for the Block Editor Pilot (early access.) *Note* At this time, decisions have not yet been made concerning county sites using the Block Editor. Staff that work on county sites are encouraged to attend, but will not be considered for the Block Editor Pilot. | Megan Wecker, Presenter, ETS; Eric Schuck, Presenter, ETS; Chrissy Dillhunt, Subject Matter Expert, ETS; Jason LaMahieu, Subject Matter Expert, ETS |
2:15pm - Breakout Sessions
| Session Title | Description | Speakers |
| Flipped Classroom: New Kid on the Block: Wordpress Block Editor Basics | WordPress has had its biggest change since its inception and we want you to try it out! This change, known as the WordPress Block Editor, has introduced several new and easier ways to create visually interesting, quality content. Think of Blocks as Legos that you can arrange and move around to create slick, modern, mobile friendly content on your site in half the time. What a great way to share our data driven impacts with external audiences! This session will give you exclusive access to your own sandbox block editor site, allow you to showcase the page you create, and could land your site on a list to be considered for the Block Editor Pilot (early access.) *Note* At this time, decisions have not yet been made concerning county sites using the Block Editor. Staff that work on county sites are encouraged to attend, but will not be considered for the Block Editor Pilot. | Megan Wecker, Presenter, ETS; Eric Schuck, Presenter, ETS; Chrissy Dillhunt, Subject Matter Expert, ETS; Jason LaMahieu, Subject Matter Expert, ETS |
| Panel: Expectations, Values, Evidence: A Discussion of What Our Funder Expect from Us, and How We Tailor Evidence to Their Needs | You've probably heard the term "Cooperative Extension" to describe Extension, meaning that our funding is cooperative - a collaboration of local, state & federal funds. With this comes different audiences for communicating our impact. Our colleagues who interact with these funders and make internal funding decisions will share their experiences with funders, what they've learned from reporting on our work, and looking forward - how to communicate with funders while honoring our organizational priorities. | Jenna Klink & Shannon Sparks (Moderators); Panelists: AED perspectives (Pat Malone, Catherine Emmanuelle, Carrie Edgar, Jerry Braatz, Art Lersch), Federal perspective (Christian Schmieder), State perspective (Matthew Call, JulieAnn Stawicki) |
| Presentation: The Storyform Storyboard: The Universal Tool to Create Effective Talks, Posters, and Slides | The Storyform Storyboard is a single tool that allows you to harness the power of story in the construction of talks, posters, infographics, and slides. This presentation will introduce the parts of the storyboard with special emphasis on the key elements of payoff and question. It will also show examples of short talks, infographics and slides to demonstrate the process and effectiveness of the method. The Storyform Storyboard will be provided to all those who attend. | Holly Walter Kerby, StoryForm Science, Founder; H. Adam Steinberg, StoryForm Science, Artist & Scientist |
| Panel: Embracing Equity in Programs: What Kind of Conversations are you having with Data? | Panelists in Horticulture, Agriculture, and Health and Well Being will discuss how they define "underserved audiences" in their program, the sources of data they are using to better understand the audiences, the specific questions they ask their data and how data has responded. Their perspectives and experiences will be applicable to colleagues across institutes and disciplines. Colleagues in this sessions will learn more ways to incorporate data for more equitable program planning and design. | Teresa Curtis, Moderator; Mike Maddox, Horticulture, Director of the Master Gardener Program; Stephanie Plaster, Agriculture Educator for Ozaukee and Washington Counties; Amanda Miller, FoodWIse Nutrition Coordinator & Health & Well-Being Extension Educator for Fond du Lac and Sheboygan Counties |
3:30pm - Breakout Sessions
| Session Title | Description | Speakers |
| Flipped Classroom: Weaving Data Through a Plan of Work | This session will demonstrate grounding an understanding of the local or regional situation in data and evidence as a first step, and how those concepts show up subsequent sections of the Plan of Work. Using data can help build a story throughout the Plan. In this presentation you will learn how to identify data for the Situation Statement in your Plan of Work, how this relates to identifying target audiences, outcomes, your action plan, and evaluation. This will help you better communicate to partners and funders why our work is important and how it can create change for people across the state. This threading of data can also illustrate major programming priorities and can be a tool for focusing and refining our work. | Jenna Klink and Kadi Row |
| Panel: Putting Extension on the Digital Map: How Topic Hubs Support Communication, Planning and Engagement | Extension Program topic hubs bring together programming efforts, people, news, events, and resources pertaining to an Extension program. They can help to entice people to learn, build trust and 'convert' them into a program participant. They are also serving as a central part of the program marketing to participation pipeline. In this session, three Extension colleagues will provide an overview over how they used topic hubs to learn about programmatic needs and for marketing our efforts. | Trisha Wagner, Moderator, Extension Education Technology Support; Kevin Graeme, Chrissy Dillhunt, Extension Communication Support |
| Presentation: Opportunities & Obstacles: Creating a Vision of Support for Scholarship in Extension | With the integration of Extension into UW-Madison, educators are facing potentially new and different opportunities and pressures for scholarship. This session will use a workshop format to begin with the four-part definition of scholarship current being used in Extension: create, intellectual work; reviewed by the scholar's peers who affirm its value; added to our intellectual history through its communication; and valued by those for whom it was intended. After a brief large group discussion about the implications of this definition of our work, we will facilitate small group discussions to develop ideas toward a vision of how Extension can support its educators to do the kinds of scholarship that meets the four parts of the Extension scholarship definition. The results of the workshop will be compiled and reported to Extension administration. | Paul Roback, Chair; Tessa Conroy, Jennifer Gauthier, Diana Hammer, Kristin Runge, Randy Stoecker |
| Presentation: Theories of Change as a Roadmap for Demonstrating Public Value: Practical Lessons from a Pilot Program | Demonstrating program impact involves a roadmap that includes clear goals, a focused evaluation plan, collaboration with partners and strong outcome reporting. In this presentation, we will show how The Literacy Link program followed this roadmap. Staring with collaboratively building a theory of change and progressing through tool development, data collection, reporting, and dissemination, this presentation will show how data from multiple program strategies can contribute to a unified plan that demonstrates a clear connection between activities and intended outcomes. Throughout the session, you will explore how an evaluation plan may evolve as implementation unfolds, gain an understanding of the importance of internal and external partnerships in evaluation success, and learn to demonstrate value by making a clear connections between activities and intended outcomes. | Lindsay Weymouth, Evaluation Specialist - University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute; Mary Campbell Wood, Professor - Human Development & Relationships Institute, UW Madison Division of Extension; Elizabeth Lexau, Justice-Involved Families Outreach Specialist - Human Development & Relationships Institute, UW Madison Division of Extension |
6:00pm - Virtual Game Night
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