PUBLICATION OVERVIEW
Rose Hayden-Smith, PhD, 2020 Extension Foundation Education Technology Fellow
What’s Here This publication is the first in an anticipated series of curated resources focusing on technology use in Cooperative Extension education and program activities. There is a universe of technologies being used by Cooperative Extension organizations across the nation, in exciting and innovative ways. It was impossible to explore all of them in this first edition, but we hope that additional technologies will be covered in future publications.
This publication includes:
A series of perspective essays that explore the nature of technology in Cooperative Extension work and what the future may hold; An exploration of two featured technologies with case studies, including a newly created social intranet/audience engagement platform designed for Cooperative Extension, and a popular social media platform (Instagram); A section on leveraging the digital information - content - we already produce using technology, including resources about search engine optimization; and Suggested resources that will support your work. We struggled when selecting which featured technologies to explore. There are others we could have included, but we chose to discuss the ones we felt would be most compelling to Cooperative Extension professionals in this moment. Future publications may curate content for different technologies. Technologies we’d like to see explored in future publications include virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and additional social technologies.
Some of the content we curated was driven in response to a survey we conducted. Three hundred twenty- eight individuals responded in total.
Social media emerged as both an opportunity and a challenge; our survey question on this topic elicited many comments. Two hundred sixty-two respondents indicated that they have encountered challenges and barriers to using social media, including:
The time required to learn about the technology (37%); The time required to use the technology effectively (70%); Training (30%); Unclear institutional policies re: social media use (45%); Not enough examples of how the technology can be used in Extension (26%); Unclear how social media fits into advancements for academics (29%); and Other (24%).
Included among the “Other” responses were:
Evaluating the impacts and effectiveness of social media use; Broadband access and accessibility issues; Target audience not using social media; Privacy and security; Staff capacity; and Administrative support, policies and logistical issues.
The information we received confirmed our inclination to devote a section of the eFieldbook to one particular social media platform (Instagram). In response to COVID-19, the Extension Foundation hosted a series of six Social Cafes in 2020. The Social Cafe we hosted about using Instagram for science communication was
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