August 10, 2009
From Extension Collaborative Wiki
- Present: Lyla Houglum, Jane Schuchardt, Dan Cotton, Mary Hightower, Rich Poling, Nancy Porter, Karen Ballard, Holley Tucker, Terry Meisenbach, Chuck Gay.
- Professional Development Plan: Chuck Gay provided information on additional webinars that the ECOP Program Committee has requested. At an earlier meeting, the ECOP Program Committee decided to produce a webinar on Universities coping with budget cuts. The Program Committee then decided to also produce a series of additional webinars on timely topics. At its meeting in Minneapolis, the Program Committee decided it would be best to work with MiTTNet because this was exactly the type of webinar they were trying to create. They want to take advantage of the MiTTNet resources already available and present another webinar as soon as possible. Instead of repeating the same webinar that was presented during the MiTTNet rollout, it was suggested that the next webinar focus on how MiTTNet is being utilized by the system. Chuck shared that a survey of Directors indicated that they are willing to participate in a webinar any day of the week, but that 3:00 pm Eastern Time was the best time of day. The group decided that, since the month of August was almost halfway over, September was a good month to produce the next webinar. Jane asked if the next webinar should be directed towards directors and administrators. Chuck, speaking on behalf of ECOP, hoped that it would include a broader audience, including local Extension educators. Rich thought we should include something in future webinars about how local-level and state-level Extension educators can actually incorporate MiTTNet resources into their programming efforts. We might be able to select specific examples of resources and show them how they have been used in real-life situations. This will help them see how the MiTTNet resources can be helpful in their program efforts and also encourage them to actually use the resources. Lyla felt that, based on our discussion, there are two potential target audiences for the MiTTNet Webinars: administrators, and the system at large. During the last webinar, we were focusing more on the system at large and Extension educators to inform and help them use the MiTTNet system. Jane thought that it would be a great idea to do a webinar directed toward administrators, to help them see how they can market MiTTNet in their states. We may want to include Extension marketing and communications departments in that group, since this Webinar would be heavy on marketing MiTTNet. Lyla also suggested adding program leaders to the targeted audience of the webinar. Rich agreed with this and stressed that, without involvement of the subject matter program leaders, the message about MiTTNet and the actual implementation of MiTTNet into programs may not happen. Lyla posed the question regarding what the webinar content should be for these audiences. The topics discussed sounded very similar to what we did in the rollout webinar. There was a suggestion to possibly include information on how MiTTNet is designed to work with eXtension and to include some of the data that have been collected with Google Analytics (e.g., who is using MiTTNet, how it’s being used, etc.). Karen stated that it would not be beneficial to include content on uploading or editing resources. Also, since we are pushing to produce this webinar soon, we probably should not share user data yet until there is a broader usage of the resources and MiTTNet has been sufficiently marketed. With such limited usage of the resources so far, the data would probably be skewed and could possibly have a negative impact on future usage of MiTTNet. Terry thought that these seemed like companion webinars that the target audience teams should be producing as part of their continuing education efforts and that they should be produced soon. Target audience webinars will provide the opportunity to bring all current and potential users up to speed with what is available on the MiTTNet system. Nancy shared what she had been doing in the topic area of Individuals and Families. She learned Moodle and created a Moodle course which includes information on MiTTNet. She also created a forum to find out what participants had learned from the materials they used and will provide an overview of MiTTNet on November 18th at the National professional development conference. Lyla suggested that the webinar in September would target directors, program leaders, and state marketing leaders on how to market MiTTNet in their states, how it’s being used, who’s using it, and how to partner with other agencies/organizations in their state. It should focus on cross referenced resources as a national project with local application that is cross content and place based. We discussed how MiTTNet and eXtension compliment each other and Dan indicated that eXtension is content collaboratively identified and developed that is targeted to the public, where MiTTNet is a directory of currently available resources that is targeted to Extension professionals. The group agreed the webinar would be on Sept. 15, 2009, 3 p.m. Eastern time. Terry will confirm this date and time. Terry, Mary, Lyla, and Jane will meet tomorrow to begin drafting an agenda.
- Terry, Mary, Jane, and Lyla will work on the agenda for the September webinar.
- Terry and Mary will get together before next week’s conference call to further discuss how to pull the Marketing and Communication departments into this project.
- Chuck and Tom will be asked to market the webinar to assure an audience.
- Other issues involving professional development will be discussed next week.
- Marketing MiTTNet: Terry suggested that we send out bi-weekly e-mail messages, focusing on a different target audience each time. He also suggested that we should focus more on targeting our communications to the appropriate user groups, instead of continuing to just reach out to the general Extension family, administrators and communications departments. We need to define the audience of these emails more so the MiTTNet work can be more efficient and effective. Terry also proposed that, in the next few weeks, work be started with those people involved in specific topic areas to get them eXtension IDs and onto the eXtension collaborate site. There they will be able to join the MiTT community. This will allow us to reach those individuals specifically interested in MiTT and provide them with information about how they can participate in professional development activities. Terry informed the group that, beginning Sept. 1, one e-mail will be sent to that list (the eXtension MiTT community) every two weeks addressing new MiTTNet content added, best practices learned, etc. The content for these e-mails will come from the MiTTNet topic area teams and will be submitted to the Communications and Marketing team to be edited and sent out to the eXtension MiTT list. It will be valuable to also send the next few MiTTNet update e-mails to the current MiTTNet distribution lists like we have been doing, just to make them aware that, in the future, the e-mail updates will be the eXtension MiTT community e-mail list. There will also be quarterly reports to the Directors/Administrators about use and impact. Terry requested some assistance to grow the marketing team to include people from other institutions. This item needs to come back to the next meeting agenda. The MiTTNet Marketing Plan is posted on: http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/MiTT_Marketing_Plan-8/10/09.
- Each MiTTNet target audience team should identify a person from its group who will assist with these marketing efforts.
- Fair Use Statement: Karen reported that Mary and she pulled fair use information from the eXtension website and from both the Stanford University and University of Wisconsin websites to provide a framework to begin discussion of a MiTTNet fair use statement. Terry pointed out that it took a long time for them to figure out a fair usage policy for the eXtension site. He also emphasized that, while MiTTNet is housed on the eXtension servers, it is separate from eXtension and is not covered by the eXtension fair use policies. MiTTNet is different from eXtension in that MiTTNet does not own the rights to content housed on its site. Those resources are owned by other entities or institutions. Mary suggested that we need to navigate through this issue very carefully and that legal consultation would be a good way to begin trying to address this issue. We did not resolve the question of which agency’s legal counsel should be consulted during this meeting. Terry suggested that we go back and look at CYFERNet policies, since the structure of MiTTNet was actually based on the CYFERNet model, and see what CYFERNet has for a fair use policy and statement. Terry agreed to contact Trudy Dunham in MN for assistance. Rich also asked team members to review the one page statement written for non-Extension users of MiTTNet that encourages them to contact local Extension educators to collaborate in the use of MiTTNet resources. If there are any suggestions for modification of this statement, let Rich know. Rich has contacted Nick Broady about the possibility of MiTTNet utilizing the links found on the eXtension public site webpage that allow users to go to pages with the addresses of local Extension offices in every state. He hasn’t heard back from Nick yet.
- Terry will contact Dede Dunham at Minnesota about CYFERnet’s policies for usage.
- Review the statement about working with local Extension educators and get feedback to Rich.
- All other items on the agenda (items #4-9) were tabled until next week’s meeting.
