Social media take home messages from NETC 2012

Social Media Evaluation

We need to determine methods of social media evaluation to determine:

o   Who are we attracting?

o   Are they engaging with us?  How do we define engagement?

o   How are we reaching them?  Which platform?  What type of interaction?

o   What are we trying to do and are we doing it?  Need to establish goals, preferably before beginning to be sure you are using the right platform/approach

Levels of evaluation and evaluation methods – run weekly since twitter only archives 7-8 days

o   Sentiment – content analysis tools –

§  CTI

§  Excel Analytics for Twitter – provides a tone score.  Can search on hashtag, free download

§   Invivo – very challenging and labor intensive.  Required 10 hours of analysis for an hour on-line chat session. 

o   Attitudes, Perceptions & Behavior – Survey research tools

§  Survey Monkey

§  Instant Survey

o   Reach, Engagement & Action – Analytic Tools – see comparison chart from slides

§  Google Analytics – web pages, new social engagement – how long are visitors there?  Where do they go when they leave?

§  Facebook Insights – page posts - # people reached, look for patterns

§  TweetReach – identify audience through retweets

§  SWIX – Facebook and Twitter, moderate, but only surface - $39/month

§  TweetStats – timing issues

§  Klout and Kred – influence

§  Google spreadsheet – open and run – configure to run automatically

§  URL link shortener – follow link access

o   Need for internal evaluator to facilitate evaluative thinking and document

o   Reflective practice – focus group – Adobe Connect

o   Participating in online networks is an essential skill for extension professionals in an interconnected world. . . core competency

Social Media Management

·         Engage a team in management of facebook pages, but allow to post either as the organization or as an individual

·         Get colleagues to invite friends to “brand” page to increase audience

·         linqto – Facebook App which allows video chat

·         Some counties using Facebook pages to promote county events – connect to Google calendar

Social media - “communication, collaboration, learning and the sharing of resources”  “Facebook is becoming the new internet.” - Luke Wrobleski

Contacts/Presenters:

·         Sarah Baughman – Military Families, VT - @programeval

·         Jerri Caldwell Hammond - @JL_Hammonds

·         Marissa Stone - @Marissa_Stone

·         Luke Wrobleski

Reflections on NETC 2012 - Opening Session

I took notes throughout NETC 2012.  These are some of my notes and other thoughts from the conference.  To set the stage, NETC is the National Extension Technology Conference.  I believe this was the third I've attended.  NETC is different than many other conferences since it is not associated with an annual meeting for a related association.  This means a lot more professional development and less meeting time.  This year's conference was hosted by LSU in New Orleans.  The hotel/convention center is on the edge of the French Quarter.  Location and facilities were excellent.  Time was provided after hours to explore the French Quarter and enjoy the amazing cuisine.  In addition, there was plenty of time for networking and discussion of deeper topics as a result of the sessions.  There is a lot happening both with technology and extension, providing opportunity for many strategic discussions about where we need to be as an organization and how we get there. 

Originally, I planned to summarize the conference here, but after thinking about the important messages from the opening session I've decided to break things up a bit.

It was quite impressive to be greeted by not one, but three higher level administrators from the LSU system, each with their unique message connecting technology and extension with practical applications for today's organization.

John Russin, Vice Chancellor and Director of the LSU Experiment Station, challenged the extension and technology professionals assembled to "move real world problems to IT capability."  In addition, push researchers to keep up with the time and develop seemless connections between the field and lab.  He has found weekly meetings with the IT staff in their college to be effective in bridging the connections between research and extension clientele and providing efficiency in solving data collection and delivery challenges.  He supported researchers working graphic designers to communicate with clientele - "Data has to jump from the library shelf."  In addition, researchers need to learn to communicate more effectively.  They need to be able to explain the purpose of their research in a one-sentence headline.  Finally, he expressed his concern that the Land Grant systems are losing their information basis now that we have moved to digital media rather than paper publications.  He spoke of the need to protect earlier data and then provide for connection of historical archives so that extension can provide a "1-stop kiosk for information" that people can use to answer questions, including historical significance and perspectives.  He closed with the statement "Researchers need your help to collect, store, deliver and communicate" their data.

Bill Richardson, Chancellor of the LSU Ag Center spoke of the committment of LSU Ag Center to technology, while cutting budgets.  He spoke of the great advances made at the Ag Center since his arrival there 15 years ago and the importance of remaining current.  His challenge was that we be sure our websites and programs are set up to market to the citizenry, not each other.  That may mean stepping outside our comfort zones and using terminology and approaches that are more effective in reaching our target audiences.

Paul Coreil, Vice Chancellor and Director of the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service expressed his belief that today can be the "golden age for Cooperative Extension if we step up to the challenge."  He spoke of the extension, as an "old cultural organization" that needs to be committed to "evolve and change very quickly."  He supports including social media delivery in promotion and tenure processes for faculty along with peer-reviewed journal articles.  Research results need to be delivered in a useable format to our clientelle. The organization needs to identify mechanisms for measuring the impact of electronic information delivery.  Hits aren't enough - they need to answer the question of "So what?  What difference did it [the information] make?  Extension programs cannot eliminate face-to-face interactions with clientele, but can use it with other interactions to obtain maximum impact.  He referred to the Capernicus study which found that Land Grants are still seen as credible, trust-worthy sources of information that will benefit from better branding and access.  He said Land grants have to change by learning to collaborate, working together for application development and obtaining sponsorship.  He supports development of online stores that can meet needs where the people are.  Finally, he spoke of how hurricane Katrina demonstrated the need for emergency back-up plans in a digital environment.  The devastation of Katrina created a great need for residents to have access to information related to food safety, water damage, etc., but electricity wasn't available so online resources were of no use.  The Ag Center was able to work with a publisher in another city to quickly print publications that could be distributed to residents that needed them.  This allowed LSU Cooperative Extension to demonstrate value and provide resources at a time of great need.

Academic Plans for Extension Programs

In Shaping the College Curriculum:  Academic Plans in Context (Lattuca & Stark, 2009) they list the components of an academic plan.  While their work is focussed on academic plans related to for credit undergraduate and graduate education, it can be easily adapted to non-credit education as delivered by Cooperative Extension.  Thinking about educational goals in extension and in terms of these components has many benefits both to the educator or educator team and the client.  Among these are increased clarity and purpose for educational activities and events, improved methods of evaluation and the idea of building a continuum for client learning that is clearly defined and easily followed.  Here are the components as defined on page 4 of the text along with how I interpret their use for Extension education.


I.  "Purposes:  knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be learned."  - In any classroom, we need to develop learning objectives.  What are our goals in terms of student learning, growth and development?  There will likely be higher, overarching goals and then intermediate objectives to be achieved in the process of reaching the higher goal.  For instance, if our goal is to increase client intake of fruits and vegetables, we may also have goals for them to learn to identify quality when purchasing fruits and vegetables, learn to grow fruits and vegetables, learn to identify fruits and vegetables available locally by season, learn to preserve fruits and vegetables, understand nutritional aspects of fruits and vegetables, learn to prepare fruits and vegetables, understand desirable intake of fruits and vegetables for various members of the family.  These preliminary goals may each be the topic of specific educational activities developed with the long term goal of increasing client intake of fruits and vegetables.


II.  "Content" - What are the preliminary goals, as developed in the example above?  And then what information will be used to achieve the preliminary and final goals? 


III. "Sequence" - Are there pieces of the educational content that need to be mastered for people to move to further levels?  In what order will information be presented to achieve this?  With the fruits and vegetables example, it may be beneficial for clients to understand the importance of increasing fruits and vegetables in their diet, so you may want to start with nutritional aspects first and then move to other components.  Or you may want to cover purchasing and growing fruits and vegetables before you talk about preparation and preservation.  Outline the sequence for covering the various topics.


IV.  "Learners:  how the plan will address a specific group or learners" - This may be more challenging in extension since you don't have the benefit of requiring prerequisite classes ro experiences.  However you will want to identify your target audience or audiences and think how they may interact differently with the educational content.  Will some members of the audience have needs that others do not?  How can these be addressed?  In this part of the process you may recognize that there is need for separate programs/curricula targeting unique audiences that can benefit from education in the area.  Understanding your audience will also help you in marketing the benefits of completing the program to potential participants.


V. "Instructional Processes" - How are you going to deliver the educational lessons?  You will want to provide education in multiple methods to reach a range of learning styles.  Where possible, active learning should be employed.  You may find different methods "fit" different objectives more effectively.  How can you utilize technology to provide linkages and increase student interaction between formal programming activities?  Can "homework" be provided to increase the effectiveness of group sessions? Help the learners master and own the content and take responsibility for obtaining their educational goals.


VI. "Instructional Resources" - What do you need to accomplish your objective?  Are there others who need to be incorporated into your team?  What about supplies, meeting locations, etc.?  Also, is there special training you need to prepare you for the experience?


VII. "Evaluation:  the strategies used to determine whether decisions about the elements of the academic plan are optimal" - There are actually a couple levels of evaluation - those at the level of specific activities and events and evaluation of the overall program.  From the perspective of the educational plan, you have made decisions plan based on your goals for the student.  Be open to the fact that they may have different goals or may react to your plan differently than you anticipate.  Be sure to ask what the students to express their goals regularly as you move through the educational process.  Do they match your goals?  Is the plan still adequate to meet those goals.  Evaluations at both levels should be based on achievement of the identified learning objective(s).


VIII.  "Adjustment" - As you find things that are and aren't working in the plan, make changes to increase the effectiveness of the plan in meeting the educational goals.  Once you go through the entire plan once, you will have things you will want to do differently.  Reflect identify what needs to change and then make the changes.  Input from students and colleagues will be extremely useful in identifying what needs to change.


Lattuca, L. R., and Stark, J. S. (2009).  Shaping the College Curriculum:  Academic Plans in Context.  2nd Edition.  San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass.