May 24, 2022
Hybrid Meetings Initiative
In July 2021, the Extension Administration Team identified six system-wide initiatives to pursue. One of those initiatives was hybrid meeting methods, meaning how do we help everyone in our system ‘up their game’ for quality programming and meetings in a way that not only accommodates online participants, but actively engages them and expands our reach?
It turns out that there are many ways to deliver programs with practices that positively engage participants, whether they are physically in the same room together, online, or both. In the coming months, let’s explore what hybrid meeting methods look like in KSRE.
Some of us are more comfortable leading programs in online settings than in others and that’s okay! Let’s take this time in history as an opportunity to learn from each other about what worked and what didn’t in our situations.
To that end, I’ll go first: In 2020 I had conducted plenty of online meetings with close colleagues, but never delivered an extension program in an entirely online environment. By the end of 2021, I had recorded more than 280 hours of finished program content (not including prep meetings!).
I’ve learned a lot in the last two years and sometimes what I learned came from unexpected places like remote kindergarten. Kindergarten teachers have amazing skills, no matter the setting — they made pandemic teaching work. Maybe it wasn’t ideal, but it was effective: my daughter learned to read, developed basic math skills, and grew relationships with her classmates.
She did well in first grade (in-person), deepening relationships first begun in online kindergarten. Can you imagine keeping 5- and 6-year-olds engaged online ALL DAY, five days a week? It wasn’t easy. You better believe I took notes and put what I learned into practice.
I’ve had a lot of time in the driver’s seat of online extension programming. My teams learned new skills every step of the way and revised approaches when new knowledge was revealed.
One of the biggest lessons has been that every program, every meeting is different, and you need to consider many different variables before crafting a plan that makes sense for that specific event and stakeholder group. None of the programs I worked on looked the same. They may have used similar components, skills, or tools, but the approach was often wildly different.
Today I want to tell you what hybrid Extension Master Gardener (EMG) basic training looked like in 2020 and 2021 across the state of Kansas. Same state-level program, different local unit hybrid meeting methods = successful program delivery with expanded capacity.
Traditionally, EMG training has been conducted in-person by state specialists and local unit extension professionals. Eastern Kansas delivered basic EMG training in the fall and western Kansas delivered in the spring. Classes were a full day every Thursday with two three-hour topics covered every week for approximately eight weeks.
This was taxing on our specialists, while participants often struggled with the dedication of a full day off work and other obligations as well as the non-sequential order of learning topics.
In 2020 and 2021, we moved online to navigate pandemic disruptions. Instead of a full day of Zoom for eight weeks, we delivered content on Thursday afternoons (1 to 4 p.m.) from September through December, closely matching K-State’s academic schedule. We had an opening session, sequential learning topics, and a closing celebration.
All told, we delivered more than 40 hours of Zoom training for people who mostly had not ever been on Zoom or used their digital devices to participate in an online class.
Was it challenging? Yes, of course. Did they get the hang of it? Yes, they did, and quicker than you might imagine. Was it a lot to take in and manage? Yes. Yes, it was for everyone. But you all adapted beautifully. Here’s what hybrid looked like in a sample of local units:
Johnson County: In 2020, participants also engaged in a Tuesday morning Zoom meeting with just Johnson County trainees. This time was used for building community and relationships among program participants, including new trainees and experienced EMG mentors. There was active engagement, questions answered and plans made for gardening activities. They used the time to follow up on the previous week’s lesson and prepare for the coming lesson. In 2021, they kept the same format with the difference being that the Tuesday morning time was in-person (if health conditions were at acceptable levels). Then they all joined separately online for the Thursday topic delivery.
Sedgwick County: Thursday EMG training was an all-day event in 2021. Mornings were in-person where local unit extension professionals facilitated hands-on learning activities, program planning and community building among participants. In the afternoon, participants engaged individually with the online Zoom lesson facilitated at the state level. Local, in-person horticulture tours were made available to new and experienced EMG volunteers alike.
West Plains District: Participants all headed into the extension office where they engaged with the content as a group, watching the live Zoom lesson shared on a screen. They asked questions directly to their local extension professional who answered immediately (demonstrating local expertise) or facilitated the question in the Zoom chat box on behalf of the group. Snacks were brought, chatting was lively, walking tours took place outside to learn about plants that grow well locally, and community was built among EMG volunteers.
Barber County: One participant requested the ability to train via recordings of the live, online Zoom lessons due to a work schedule that made synchronous participation in basic training unlikely. At the state level, we drafted communication that could be copied/pasted into an email from the local extension professional to participants that enabled easy transfer of knowledge, links and resources to EMG trainees. The participant watched lessons on their own time and communicated with their local unit extension professional to satisfy the question “What did you learn?” well enough to indicate that the recording had, indeed, been watched.
What’s next? Will trainees provide the required volunteer hours? Is this effective for retaining EMG volunteers? The answers depend a lot on how personally connected participants felt to their local unit extension professional (whom they will be volunteering for).
By and large, it went very well with learning results similar to the traditional methods of delivering EMG basic training. Some questions to ask:
Can we improve? Always.
Do we want to invest the time and resources to deliver hybrid training well? Yes, hands-down.
Did it expand our audiences, accommodate participation by people who previously could not engage, and highlight team expertise? Absolutely.
Did local units put their own spin on training? Yep, and that made all the difference. Same state-level program, different local unit hybrid meeting methods = successful program delivery with expanded capacity.
What do hybrid meetings or programming look like to you? Have you seen it done well? What worked and what didn’t work? Moving forward in this new normal will require teamwork and collaboration, learning from mistakes, and celebrating together when things go well. Let’s share so we can learn from one another.
Please email me your story at ANRPLC@ksu.edu and let’s start talking about hybrid meeting methods that work for KSRE. We can deliver programs with hybrid meeting methods well. Full Stop. We can, we will, and we’ll be amazing at it. Go Team KSRE!