for all Cooperative Extension professionals to use for webinars and other digital engagements, it had features well beyond being just a simple calendar. It was a knowledge database of thousands of digital engagements that had happened over several years, with easy access to recordings and smooth tagging/keywording features to make it easy to find fantastic resources. Needless to say, this was an incredibly challenging platform to replace. The second platform, Engage & Empower Online , was mostly a failure in the sense that it did not drive engagement and was difficult to scale. However, learning from this experience and applying those learnings to what is now Connect Extension made that experience valuable. What went wrong with Engage & Empower Online? This technology was powered by a third party and is a social intranet/extranet platform that runs across an organization’s Google Suite. If you are from a large organization with every member utilizing the Google Suite, it is a perfect tool. However, for external users - it was not user friendly, and unfortunately about 99% of Extension users were external to our G Suite. The login system was clunky for external users and there was no automation in account creation, which made it extremely difficult to scale. The lesson here was that the registration and login process had to be better aligned with industry standards and allow individuals the choice on how they wish to register and login. The current industry standard is to offer multiple options, including third-party login (Google, Facebook, Twitter) or traditional email login. By comparison, Connect Extension surpassed engagement over Engage & Empower Online in the first four days than in the entire eighteen months that Engage & Empower Online was active. It was also not fully mobile friendly, which has become more and more important over the past decade. From a cost perspective, the technology supporting Connect Extension is a fraction of the cost of the technology that powered Engage & Empower Online.
From both of these experiences, the Extension Foundation was able to draw some conclusions:
When creating your own peer-to-peer network via a technology platform, registration must be smooth and as automated as possible. With Connect Extension - users can register via email, Facebook, Google, or Twitter, and they are automatically placed into specific groups depending on some rules set up on the backend to match the registration. For example, Extension Foundation members are automatically added to the Impact Collaborative group in Connect Extension based upon their specific email domains. Of course, there’s always a few indivi duals that end up in the moderation queue - but this only accounts for 2% of new accounts. Although some moderation is necessary, creating the environment for peer-to-peer sharing without too much hand-holding is key. Essentially, the less individuals have to rely on support to accomplish something basic, the better. With Engage & Empower Online, Extension Foundation was constantly receiving support requests for basic things such as logging in, posting, retrieving content, etc. With Connect Extension , support requests have been minimal. To create this environment, not only does the technology have to be user-friendly - but Extension Foundation has had to spur a culture that encourages and empowers individuals to participate. This includes making the expectations very clear up front about what the individual gets out of sharing on a peer-to-peer network. They receive significant national reach for their content or offerings, connections to others doing similar work, and a chance to highlight the work they are doing in a way that helps others across the system. The Technology Connect Extension is powered by a third-party company called Crowdstack. A key element that makes this technology successful is that the administrative functions of the platform are incredibly simple, making for a smooth user experience. This includes an easy moderation process for both content and users, quick access to analytics - available to all that own and administer groups in the platform, and the ability to make quick updates and changes to content across the system to help others that are trying to contribute. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, especially for those who are already using popular platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Users can quickly curate content - including links - and share them with
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