August 17, 2009

From Extension Collaborative Wiki

• Present: Lyla Houglum, Bo Beaulieu, Tom Coon, Claudia Mincemoyer, Robert Craven, Rich Poling, Karen Ballard, Holley Tucker

• ECOP hosted Webinar: Terry, Jane, Mary and Lyla met last week after our conference call to discuss the ECOP webinar, and take some of the ideas from last week’s meeting and see how they could be implemented. During last week’s conference call, everyone agreed on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm Eastern time as a possible date and time. This date was confirmed by Terry.

The target audience for this Webinar will be Extension directors and administrators. The goal is to engage Extension directors and administrators and provide them with a tool to market MiTTNet in their states and institutions. They also proposed that this be an ECOP-led Webinar opposed to a MiTTNet-led Webinar and that it include four major sections:

1. An Introduction- including information on what MiTTNet is and what it isn’t, where it came from, and who is involved, etc.,
2. A pre-taped stand-alone marketing tool, presented by Tom. This will be 15-20 minutes long, at most, and will be placed on the Internet with a separate URL so that it can be accessed and used in the states with Extension educators, etc.,
3. Possibly have presentations by five Extension administrators, one from each of the five regions, speaking about how they plan to market and use MiTTNet in their states, and
4. A wrap-up that includes how to access the marketing tools, suggestions for their use, etc.

Rich asked if the target audience for the Webinar included program leaders. He felt that they would be an important group to include in order to get MiTTNet implemented at the state and county levels. Karen added that it would be beneficial to put this type of information in the hands of people who would actually be implementing these things in their states. After discussion on both sides of the issue, Lyla decided it would be best to keep the focused target audience the same, but that the Extension administrators and directors would be asked to invite their program leaders and communications/marketing directors to participate in the Webinar.

Lyla said that she still receives e-mail from Extension educators, wanting the link to the Roll-out Webinar and with questions on how to access the MiTTNet database. She is hoping that this Webinar will give directors, administrators, program leaders and communication departments some good information on how to access and use MiTTNet.

Bo suggested that there should be a way to delete or remove resources from the MiTTNet resource database that do not fit with the original mission of MiTTNet. Because MiTTNet is an open site and many people can upload resources to it, there are some resources that don’t appear to fit with the original purpose of MiTTNet. Tom recommended that we should contact those people who have entered those resources and talk to them about rethinking their entries or deleting them. Lyla suggested that, if we come across an entry that doesn’t seem to fit with the MiTTNet mission, the subject area teams should contact the person who submitted the resource and have that person make the case for why that resource should be included in the database. Based on that information, team leaders have the discretion to make decisions and remove resources if necessary.

• Lyla asked the group for more feedback on section three of the ECOP Webinar. Did the group feel the five administrators would be useful or not? Rich felt it would be more useful if we had individuals doing the presentations who had actually used MiTTNet resources in their programming, instead of hearing how they plan to use it. The group agreed, but didn’t know of any individuals who had already used MiTTNet resources in their programs. The group then began to brainstorm names of directors in their regions. The group suggested names of directors and administrators who would be good presenters for the Webinar. Specific individuals were identified: Paul Coreil, Southern Region; Daryl Buchholz, North Central Region; Gina Eubank, 1890 Region; Linda Fox, Western Region. No one was identified for the Northeast region. Tom volunteered to get in touch with someone in that region and with Daryl Buchholz. Bo will contact Paul Coreil and Gina Eubank. Lyla will contact Linda Fox. Lyla will write up the plan and send it to Tom and Bo so they can all ask for the same thing for the webinar. The group agreed to the proposed structure for the Webinar.

• DELIVERABLES

1. Lyla will talk with Chuck Gaye about hosting the ECOP/MiTTNet Webinar.
2. Terry will arrange the time for Tom to tape his segment for the Webinar.
3. Those who volunteered to contact directors or administrators to be on the Webinar will do so and let Lyla know whether those individuals have agreed to do so.
4. Tom will get in touch with a director in the Northeast region who might want to participate in the director/administrator segment of the Webinar.
5. Lyla will send out a short information piece to those getting in touch with the Extension directors and administrator who will be asked to present on the Webinar that will include what we would like for them to address in the presentations.

• Fair Use/Non-Extension User Statements: Rich said he hadn’t received any feedback since last week’s meeting on the sample non-Extension user statement he sent out. Lyla and others said they thought the statement looked good. He also said that he still hadn’t heard back from Nick about the possibility of linking to the eXtension links to pages with location information for county Extension offices in each of the states. He will re-contact Nick. Lyla indicated that Terry had contacted Trudy Dunham from CYFERNet about the fair use statement on the CYFERNet site. Trudy did let Terry know that she had removed the fair use statement from the CYFERNet site because they were in the process of editing it.

• DELIVERABLES: Rich will contact Nick to find out about linking to contact information for county Extension offices.

• Evaluating MiTTNet: Karen reported to the group that the evaluation team has decided to move forward with phone interviews to gather qualitative information from the target audience team leaders. They are in the final stages of editing the questions for this survey. They are on schedule and hope to conduct these interviews the first week in September. Tom recommended there be a question on the survey that would allow team leaders to share information about how the MiTTNet resources have been used. Claudia wanted to know if it would be possible for the evaluation team to schedule appointments with team leaders before the actual phone interview. Lyla also asked Karen if it would be possible to use some of the qualitative data from the survey on the September 15th Webinar, possibly in the wrap–up session. Karen said she would speak with the evaluation team and try to get that information to Lyla in time for the Webinar. The information at that point would probably be more anecdotal-types of comments rather than a summary of the survey results.

• Updates from target audience teams: Claudia reported that she did not have any updates. She discussed her concern regarding the issue that resources that aren’t relevant to the MiTTNet mission have been uploaded, but she did feel like the group came up with a good plan to deal with that issue. No other updates.

• Other issues: All other issues on the agenda were tabled until next week’s conference call. Claudia, Bo, Karen, Rich, and Bob will not be available for the call on Monday, August 24th.