May 7, 2019
Thank You: Quarterly Effort Reports
Let’s take a moment to pat ourselves on the back!
Over the past month I indicated via email, regional directors, and the partnership meetings that we HAVE to do better regarding submitting our Quarterly Effort Reports. Our “ask” for you to do so was a very sincere ask. Reporting is critically important. Reporting our direct education contacts represents to our stakeholders the demand for the education we provide. Reporting our effort shows them how we invest our time and funds in our programming efforts. At year end, reporting our impact and success stories informs our stakeholders of the “Why?” behind our efforts and how well we do our job!
At the end of Quarter 1, due to issues already discussed, we only had 42,989 direct education contacts reported. Thanks to your renewed efforts, as of May 2, we have 420,288 direct education contacts for Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 combined. To put that in perspective, that number only includes those direct education contacts made by our Extension professionals for the first two quarters of this year. The total number of educational contacts made by our Extension professionals in 2017-2018 was only 649,609 for the year. We are almost 65 percent of the way to that annual number with two quarters left to go! With your continued efforts, we will easily surpass that number.
As a reminder, a direct educational contact is one where there is an effort made by the educator and the learner to actively engage in the educational effort. Based on our current policy, the following would be examples of direct educational contacts (among others):
• A typical Extension workshop held face-to-face or via a “live” webinar or social media feed;
• A telephone or teleconference educational interaction between educator, learner, or learners; and,
• An email, text, or social media messaging educational interaction between educator, learner, or learners.
Not included in the above examples are newsletter circulations, Extension publications purchased, social media educational posts, newspaper articles, and views of previously recorded webinars. These are all important educational activities, but, due to the lack of an active interchange between educator and learner, they are considered indirect contacts.
Please note that reporting isn’t just for agents. Under our current policy, which has not changed for many years and will not change for the rest of this reporting year, an agent that hosts an Extension workshop is supposed to report the workshop’s direct educational contacts. If a specialist is speaking at an event that is hosted by someone other than an agent, that specialist is responsible for reporting those direct educational contacts. If multiple specialists speak at a workshop not hosted by an agent, the specialists need to decide which participating specialist will report that workshop’s direct education contacts.
Thanks again to everyone for your renewed efforts!